Amazon "Free App of the Day" problems w/ Gamesalad

Crazybreadman

Hi, I received an email from Amazon about having Bow Assassin for their "Free App of the Day Promotion." They had some issues though, which are related to GS publishing. What should I tell them? Also, do you think I should do it? I released it last week and it almost made it to top 100, but fell short and is currently going down (I think its at 150 or so right now.)

Amazon Confidential
Hello,
We noticed your app on our site and we were hoping that you would be interested in participating in our Free App of the Day Promotion. We did however notice the following issues listed here that we would need to be changed or updated first. If you are still interested please read below for the agreement. We are very excited at the prospect of including your app in our promotion! Thanks!
We noticed that your app Bow Assassin had the following issue(s).
· Permissions: Can you please remove the following permissions or let us know why they are needed? We have recently had a huge increase in poor reviews around permissions, without an explanation added to the detail page, you may see upwards of 200 1-star reviews in one day. I want you to have a really successful promotion and especially want to make sure and call out any risks I see now so that you have time to make updates.

o (list permissions below):
§ Open network sockets
§ Access information about Wi-Fi networks

· IAP: Recently we’ve seen a huge increase in 1 star reviews around IAP in paid apps (up to 200 1 stars in one day in some cases) and we are now asking that this be removed in order to be eligible for the promotion. If this is something that causes you to no longer want to participate in the promotion, we understand and will remove your app from the calendar. Perhaps instead of having links to your current games you could just have the graphic and a list of your other games so our customers can find the other apps you offer.

jigglybean

Although I cant answer the GS/Amazon question but I think your game isnt offering a Wifi Option - so users can use their own Wifi instead of their own Mobile bandwith to play the game.


Regarding the promo - I think you'll be daft not to. But also back it up with some of your own promo work like tweets, facebook etc to promote this great offer. Once the offer has expired, you can review the data to see if it did help or not, useful for future games.

Good luck with it

Braydon_SFX

Go for it man. If nothing else, you'll get tons of downloads and hopefully break the top 100 when it goes back to paid...It'll also be good when releasing other games...

scrapee_net

As far as I know, gamesalad adds these permissions requests. They are added to the AndroidManifest.xml file.

You can edit your AndroidManifest.xml file and remove the permissions they mentioned.

You'll need a tool called apktool, to uncompress the files.

Check this thread for a complete how to edit it:
http://forum.oxygen.im/viewtopic.php?id=681

I didn't try by myself, but I think it should work.

Crazybreadman

I went ahead and sent back an email saying I'll do it. But I still have some fixes to iron out. Has anyone done this promotion before?

@Braydon_SFX & @jigglybean - Yeah I think some apps went into the top 100 afterwards, so maybe this will be my second chance

@scrapee_net - Ok, cool I'll check that out and see if it works.

Another possible issue is in a following email they said the app needs a language pack. It was with a bunch of other generic things on the checklist so it wasn't targeted specifically to me, but I have no idea. Does GS include a language pack?

jigglybean

I dont think there is a language pack so just put in your instructions or Promo text that its English only.

Hapiapps

I also heard that they say they will send you a percentage of money you would have made if it was paid but that has been said to be false. Good info from @FryingBaconStudios - nice vids

firemaplegames

@Hapiapps: You do not get any money for the Free App of the Day promotion. However, you will most likely get a nice amount of downloads during that 24 hours.

I set Grisly Manor for the promotion and got over 100,000 downloads, which is really good for Android.

I did not notice any increase/decrease in sales when it switched back to paid, but it's always nice having an additional 100,000 people get to play my game! And it definitely contributed positively to sales of my next game, as a lot of people said that they bought The Lost City due to having played and enjoyed Grisly Manor when it was free.

Crazybreadman

@jigglybean - Ok I hope that flies w/ Amazon. Maybe they don't absolutely require a language pack but they made it sound that way.

@Firemaplegames - Cool man, that's a ton of downloads for one day!

jonmulcahy

As far as I know, gamesalad adds these permissions requests. They are added to the AndroidManifest.xml file.

You can edit your AndroidManifest.xml file and remove the permissions they mentioned.

You'll need a tool called apktool, to uncompress the files.

Check this thread for a complete how to edit it:
http://forum.oxygen.im/viewtopic.php?id=681

I didn't try by myself, but I think it should work.

I would advise against doing this, it would be considered a ToS violation.

Crazybreadman

@jonmulcahy - Yeah I didn't think about that. I sent an email to GS about it yesterday and haven't heard back yet.

jonmulcahy

Do you have any links to your website/twitter/other games? That's a good reason to allow network access

Crazybreadman

Yeah they say no advertising in apps that do the promotion including links to other games. I'll have to probably get rid of the other games button and put something else in like twitter or website which should be ok.

jigglybean

Crazy - if you cant place your game ads in, work a bit smarter. Maybe change your splash screen if you can to include your website, twitter and facebook urls.

Or even better if you can get users to post their score on their own facebook page. This will at least give you a chance to grab some extra followers to mail shot to when you release your next title.