Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I wanted to learn iOS dev, so made the simplest game I could think of: a card game where you just draw a random card and win if it's between two values. Then I made another app that just transliterates your name into Japanese characters and displays that. That one made $33 / year.

Together they almost covered the Apple Developer fee :-)

Things continued like this for years, until one day Apple started getting harsher on gambling. While my game has no other players, and the "money" you win doesn't save anywhere or get you anything, it was still gambly enough that I could no longer have it in the store as an individual developer. Then the Japanese name app was also removed because it wasn't substantive enough (I don't disagree).

I don't mention them usually, because the loss didn't mean much to me and I'm still fine with developing for iOS in the future. But here you asked especially for projects that made money but that we wouldn't usually talk about.



Stories like this have me convinced that choosing to do serious business with a company like Apple or Google, has a strong chance of ending up in losing time and money. Maybe you'll get a few users, maybe not. Maybe they'll remove your entire catalog of apps, maybe not.

At least my domain registrar and hosting provider probably won't remove my website.


Just a suggestion... try Flutter. This way you at least get a cross platform app with (arguably) less work. Doubles your marketplace and reduces your risk on a single store blocking you. Also consider that what sells on iOS may sell even better on Android.


> While my game has no other players, and the "money" you win doesn't save anywhere or get you anything, it was still gambly enough that I could no longer have it in the store as an individual developer.

Uh oh. I am developing a single player game that's somewhat similar to yours and was planning to release it on iOS. It doesn't involve money, just points, but it is push your luck. Do you know what I should be looking for to see Apple's new guidelines for this?


I'm not sure, the message I got didn't refer to any particular definition of gambling.

"In order to reduce fraudulent activity on the App Store and comply with government requests to address illegal online gambling activity, we are no longer allowing gambling apps submitted by individual developers. This includes both real money gambling apps as well as apps that simulate a gambling experience."


Thanks. I think I'm okay. I'm not having players bet anything, or doing loot boxes or anything like that, so I think I'll be okay.

That being said, I do have a board game design where you do bet chips that I would have liked to make a software version of. Guess I'm not releasing that one on iOS.


Out of curiosity, did you make those apps paid or chose to show ads within app UI?


Both were paid. Also forgot to mention (implied though), but the card game one made $60/year.


Props to you. Recently I was looking for something to measure my cruise speed on a bicycle, and a single developer appears to dominate App Store search results with a dozen or more nearly identical speedometer apps—all free and packed with ads.

When I think that Apple would allow that, but not an honest paid app that transliterates a name into another language, I start questioning whether I should get into that ecosystem, or rather focus on Mac apps only and distribute them outside of the store.


It's been a long time, so seems I got the reason a bit wrong when I looked into it properly now. It seems I could have avoided it by improving any small bit:

"We noticed that your app has not been updated in a significant amount of time... To keep your app on the App Store, submit an updated version for review and make sure it follows the latest App Review Guidelines. If you are unable to submit an update within 30 days, your app will be removed from the App Store until you submit an update and it is approved."




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: