Digital Pre-order?

Graybay

I want to offer a digital pre-order of our game as one of the incentives for donations. Is this possible somehow with Itunes? Or is there a way to get a certain number of "purchase keys" to distribute for the game?

Thanks!

tenrdrmer

No you cannot do anything like that. You do get access to 50 promo codes that will work even before the app is live but…. It a violation of apple rules to sell them. So Still no there is really no way to do something like that.

Graybay

That's too bad, I don't understand why I've seen so many people offering it then. There is really no workaround, no way to gift apps even?

Graybay

.

tenrdrmer

You can gift apps from itunes. but you cannot do that before it goes live.

Can you provide an example of where you have seen a promotion like this?

Graybay

I've seen numerous projects on kickstarter offering this, the most recent I have seen is http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hatsproductions/organ-trail-directors-cut?ref=live.

Would gifting apps to a large number of people be a lot of work?

tenrdrmer

I would imagine they are just going to gift the apps to those people. Thats not really a "digital-pre-order" more of a hey give us $20 to make it and we'll make sure you get a free copy.

I have no idea about the work in gifting to large numbers you would have to check into how itunes handles all that.

Graybay

Okay, thanks for the info tenrdrmer!

MarkOnTheIron

Well you could do something similar to a pre-order using promo codes.

Let's say that Apple approves your game today but you set the release date for the 1st of February. During this period your app will be unavailable on the App Stores but you still can request promo codes and redeem them. That way while your app is not officially released you can give donators an early copy of your game just by giving them the promo codes.

This is used a lot to give apps to review sites before the official release date.

Another thing. If you decide to instead gift it when the app is released remember that you can only gift apps to peoples in your country.


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tenrdrmer

@MarkOnTheIron

The main thing with your idea is using caution with how you present it. If apple conceives what you are doing as selling your codes you could loose your account all together.

I did not know about not being able to gift to other countries. Thats good info.

MarkOnTheIron

Technically you're not selling them. You're gifting them to people that helped funding your project. But it's a thin line and if Apple gets it wrong you could have troubles. It would be good, if someone want to go through this route, to contact Apple first and ask them.

Graybay

I'm not sure if I will even offer free copies then, sounds like it may make things overly complicated for nothing. Maybe I will just make it free for the first few days. Thanks for the input guys.