Parental Gate on baner/interstitial ads on iOS

kartimanu · May 2020

Hello,

Is there any event I can capture on GameSalad like beforeMinimize or beforeNavigateAway, so that I can use them to display parental Gate? Or is there any container i can wrap the show banner behavior so that it can't be clicked. I am looking for ideas to either display parental gate on tap of ad or disable clicking on the ad.

Thanks,

Harika

pinkio75 · May 2020

Hi yes now Apple for kids category required a parental gate; honestly i've add one scene before the game start you can make in GS a scene like this:

One time the game was accepted and it has been approved, but in one second case Apple required that this scene lock the user when click ADV banner or interstitial... and is it impossible... So i was forced to remove the game from the kids category.

@adent42 there are something that show a block like parental gate when the user click ADV?

Thanks.

adent42 · May 2020

Not right now. My guess is they want us to use the parental blocking / approval functions. I'd have to put some thought into how best to implement those behaviors (off-the-top-of-my-head, it would be a device attribute that gets set to one value when asking for parental permissions (like 0), then another value when it gets them (like 1) and another value if rejected (like -1).

pinkio75 · May 2020

https://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/comment/613909#Comment_613909

I have been forced to remove many games from the children's categories or i'm unable to update them because Apple has introduced a very restrictive policy for kids games like parental gate etc...

so if you could add one global attribute that gives us the permission to enable a block or not before to see all advertisements would be a great thing.

adent42 · May 2020

So there is no generic parental gate API like the one for IAP (I had assumed one existed).

You will have to manually make parental gate activities and wrap all your ad calls around Rules looking at an attribute.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/kids-apps/

It seems the idea is to make task that are a little too hard for toddlers. (Like harder math, trivia for older adult information, or manual dexterity / reading task).

Based on apple's examples, @pinkio75's example should be good enough, but if not, I suggest showing harder math problems or trivia from before the year 2000 (omg, before 2000 is now "old"). You should also have fallback task, so if the parent fails one because they don't know the trivia or can't answer the question, for instance, that they can try again.

adent42 · May 2020

Other examples:

https://blog.momswithapps.com/2013/08/20/how-are-kids-app-developers-communicating-to-parents/

adent42 · May 2020

Aaaand... I AM NOT SAYING THIS WILL HAPPEN SOON BECAUSE WE'RE IN AD NETWORK UPDATE HECK RIGHT NOW BUT....

Integrating this might work:

https://www.superawesome.com/developers/

adent42 · May 2020

@kartimanu to specifically answer your question, You will need to manually track this and use rules.

The idea would be to:

Have an attribute called 'parentApproved' set to -1.
Have a parent gate scene that will be used by the pause behavior.
Around every activity that need approval you will need a rule that behaves as follows:

when (parentApproved == -1) Pause Game w/ Parent Gate scene (parent gate scene's result is to set parentApproved base on whether the activity is successfully completed).

when (parentApproved == 0) Don't do thing (show ad / open url / tweet, etc)

when (parentApproved == 1) Do thing.

pinkio75 · May 2020

Yes But Apple required me to use the parental gate also when the user click on the ADV Banner Or Interstitials before the ADV leave the App...

I mean: if the user click on ADV You need to relaunch the parental gate.

I suppose that is impossible in GS because we need a "specific behavior" where if you try to "leave the game" then you "relaunch" the parental gate.

Honestly i say that creating the parental gate was not enough for Apple, I also had reply to Apple a lot of questions about advertising policy on children etc... etc... anyway I gave up and published the game out of the kid's category.