Hacker News Reader

Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that "without ads and unnecessary permissions" is so rare that it makes it to the HN front page. It really should be the other way around: "A blacklist of apps with ads and unnecessary permissions" should be newsworthy.

View on HN

App stores are a wasteland. The vast majority of apps have "in-app-purchases" and try to nag users into paying a never ending stream of extras, or are filled with ads. Where are those simple apps that cost $1-$10, pay once, can use forever and have no ads?

For example I am trying to put a game on my child's iPad. The game is free but you only got one level open. If you want to play the other levels you got to pay. But it won't simply unlock the game, no, only a small part. If you want more, pay more, there is no end to the "buying" phase. This is a no-go situation with children. They can be tricked into clicking these in-app sales and getting stuck there. And that's what the developers want.

I want once I pay for a game, to know that 1. it will never advertise upsells or anything else 2. it will never block access for any feature 3. there are no trick links, buttons or UI flows to get children into the buying side of the app. On AppStore I can only find the Apple Arcade games to be clean, and those are subscription based.

The moral - I want to buy and have no choice of decent apps. How did we get into this mess after 15 years of App store evolution?

I would really love to see a curated version of the Play Store that only lists the good apps and not the legion of shitty ones.

Nintendo consoles seem to provide the experience you're looking for. Clean and curated games with no ads or subscriptions. And the games tend to be of higher quality, focused on actual gameplay as opposed to the dark patterns common on phone apps (e.g. time-limited "stamina" and other psychological manipulation tricks to encourage addictive behavior).

> Nintendo consoles seem to provide the experience you're looking for. Clean and curated games with no ads or subscriptions.

This mostly matches my experience, for example Nintendo Switch occasionally gets some critique for being a bit dated (apparently a new version is in the works), but it feels like a step up from mobile gaming and has all sorts of great games, from Legend of Zelda to Animal Crossing and even well made ports from other platforms.

That said, there are also free games that do have aspects of monetization, but I think it's easy enough not to save card details or anything like that.

Honestly, I kind of wish the first Switch generation would hang around for longer and developers would keep making well optimized games for it.

How does this work financially? From what I understand, access to the console market involves considerable upfront cost, so these games will hardly be from independent developers. If the games come from studios they wouldn't offer them for free, so who pays for these apps?

The business model is simply selling the game (typically in a $10-60 range), and sometimes additional DLC (downloadable content).

There are many games by independent developers on consoles, too. For example, Nintendo regularly releases "Indie World Showcase" promotional videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNLmMMB-J4

Ok, I understand, the games are not free, just one-time payment and done. That's something.

You probably haven’t seen the Nintendo Online Shop on Switch. It’s filled with so much crappy games it’s hard to find anything of value at all, apart from going on the front page recommendations of first part Nintendo games and other big publishers.

If you browse through the new section it’s full of mostly cheap indie games.

I have found high-quality pay-once apps with no advertising, and I've done it with minimal effort.

Unfortunately, it won't do any good to recommend them to you, or their developers, because none of them are games, and the apps are so niche that nearly nobody on HN will want to purchase them anyway.

But they do exist; they're on the Play Store, hidden in plain sight.

I wish there was an f-droid for iOS; not for installing from, just as a way of searching for apps (including paid apps) that don't have ads or in-app purchases.

There is https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ but it's just for games ;-)

(I tried finding an iPad version of workrave/safeeyes, but all the apps are full of nags to pay for extra features or show ads in their break-time etc.)

My daughter and I made a little game (mostly to teach her programming) and it turned out not too bad. I thought it could be a good motivation for her to get it into the Apple App Store too, where her friends can see and download it.

We don't want any money, so no monetizing. The app will not be popular as we don't intend to do any marketing.

I realize that this is quite the opposite of what Apple wants.

Suppose the quality of the app is not worse than that of its paid and ad infested competitors, my question is: Does it have a chance to get past the review? Does it have a chance to stay in the App Store in the long run, assuming we do all the necessary updates for new iOS versions and critical bug fixes but nothing more?

Basically my question is: Will this be an uphill battle, because Apple doesn't earn anything from us?

If anyone has experience with a completely free iOS app, I would love to hear from you.

Yes, it will be up-hill. Apple development costs $99/year to Apple. You'll have to update and test on new releases - the platform vendors churn turns into your heavy lifting. Apple review process for your app could be tedious every time you release.

I've worked on a few FOSS apps in the Apple App Store and currently consider it "not worth it".

I've written to government officials about their anti-consumer practices.

An aside…

I encourage you to get a Nintendo switch and not connect it to a network.

Very high quality game (cartridges) that you pay for once.

I have long wanted an app store that only carried ad- and unnecessary-permission-free apps, both free and paid. no one seems inclined to set one up though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com