Large media catalogs need consumables. Every in app purchase item has to be approved by apple individually making it extremely impractical to list an IAP for every single item.
I can think of one - ever heard of TouchTunes? They have internet-streaming jukeboxes in many bars and restaurants. You can sign into them with your phone using their app, buy credit with an IAP, and then you spend the credit on the jukebox, selecting songs to play IRL with your phone.
It's technically IAP consumables, but it doesn't seem skeevy like the clash of clans / candy crushes of the world.
How are you going to define "consumable"? A game like clash of clans or candy crush could just restructure things so that you get to permanently "keep" your purchase, but it is still practically consumed. So for example, you could "have" an item that only worked for 15 minutes after purchase. If that's too transparent, consider some kind of level scheme where those level 3 units you bought last week are basically worthless against the level 5 unis you're up against this week. How are you going to forbid that?
The apps have a human review process. It's not like there's some algorithm that handles these kind of things.
The problem you mention is very much a "I'll know it when I see it" type thing - I'd trust Apple to bring down the hammer on someone trying to rules-lawyer their way around the restriction.
Human-reviewing the "scamminess" of an IAP at Appstore scale would be a complete disaster. Every reviewer would have to understand the full dynamics of the game before improperly labelling an IAP as scammy.
Its impractical to think every reviewer can spend enough time with every game to make the right call.
That isn't scammy. In these sorts of RTS games there are build times. Its special to not wait on those. Remember the cheat code everylittlethingshedoes in WarCraft II? How is buying access to that scammy? You don't have to buy it - and you can play the game. No one is forcing you to buy it, just as no one is forcing you to play.
The entire game is structured around annoying the player into speeding up build timers and buying other resources via very expensive consumables.
They start out reasonable, seconds to minutes, soon a day or two, and quickly scale up to the point where everything you want to do takes weeks of real time. And that's before you get into the other resources required!
Calling CoC and its mechanics an RTS is an insult to RTSes. When I queue up a Portal in Starcraft 2, I do not wait for a full week with the option to spend $4 to finish it instantly.
And another thing, the "you don't have to buy/play it" argument is really non-sequitur when we're considering app store policies whose reason for existing is banning annoying behavior. The entire point of games like CoC is to manipulate vulnerabilities in the human decision making process for great profit. CoC is basically Farmville with battles, which is crap for the same reason that Zynga and all their "games" are crap.
A simple test: Could the paid consumables be removed and replaced with game-earned items only with no negative impact to the experience? If yes, the paid consumables are probably crap.
Ever think for one moment that a mobile RTS has a different use case and different market than someone who plays Starcraft 2? Don't you think there are more of "those people", than those that will be annoyed with week build times.
If these "RTS" (keep in mind, its just marketing) games are only designed to be played a few minutes a day, over weeks and months, it could be easily continually engaging. Much like a late night show or your weekly Game of Thrones.
For that reason, you probably aren't the target market. Having a fleet of IAP testers (who are humans and get sick, quit their job, change positions) that are fully trained in all the existing games as well as being experts in game mechanics and can quickly understand new IAPs and new game types as they emerge is a very myopic and naive view of the world.
The "scam" argument boiled down to its core is really a moral judgement. With that I'd say good luck attempting to scale that and not piss someone important off.
We're talking about the Apple App Store, home of "we know evil when we see it" policies. They see lack of specificity as a feature.
Basically, people are criticizing games where it is possible to spend a ridiculously large (or inifinte) amount of money. Any loopholes should be obvious enough that they're not a problem.
A newspaper might structure their IAPs so that instead of buying a subscription or a single issue you can buy a "bundle" of issues. I.e. instead of a 1 Week subscription you buy 7 issues and the counter only decrements when you actually download one, whether that takes 7 days or 7 months to happen.
But that's not really the point anyway - there's absolutely no reason they couldn't say consumable IAPs can only be used for media. IIRC they did something similar when they started subscriptions and background content updates.
However, that would just mean that the games with consumable IAPs will switch to subscription IAPs (where the subscription is short - probably a few hours to a few days at most). I'm not sure how much better that is.
Or they will start selling media. If you search long enough, you may be able to find someone willing to borrow you that book with magical recipes, but you can also buy it in the bookshop...
The difference between digital media and game items can be made very, very small.
Also, I don't think the issue is with consumables. For example, that magic book I mentioned above becomes your property ever after in the same sense that an ebook you buy at Amazon or Apple becomes your property. Similarly, I could sell you the eternal right to take a shortcut in some virtual world. With enough shortcuts (and the matching long boring detours that people not owning the right to use them) one still can make a game that many would judge to be more an attempt at getting ever more money from its players than a game.
Finally, in real life, we are fine buying consumables all the time, and we also are willing to pay seemingly arbitrary amounts of money for them. For example, for many, $10 for a cup of coffee is absurd. Yet, there also are many who happily pay it, if the situation is right.
So, it's not selling consumables, it is milking your users that people object to.
> However, that would just mean that the games with consumable IAPs will switch to subscription IAPs (where the subscription is short - probably a few hours to a few days at most).
Apple already thought of that, and it's specifically prohibited by the App Store Review Guidelines:
> Apps may only use auto renewing subscriptions for periodicals (newspapers, magazines), business Apps (enterprise, productivity, professional creative, cloud storage) and media Apps (video, audio, voice), or the App will be rejected
There are plenty of dating apps with auto-renewing subscriptions.
I think a big problem with Apple is that the whole review process is a black box, because the documentation is thin, contrary, or non-existent. You basically have to submit and hope they accept your app and when it's rejected, the reasons are often arbitrary or contrary to previous submissions that were excepted.
I can't think of any counter examples that are available on iOS anyway, because of the sales restrictions: the two I thought of were the Kindle and Nook stores, but you can't buy books in either app because Amazon and Barnes and Noble aren't prepared to give apple a 30% cut of the sale.
