New app store review guidelines affect kids&gambling apps

arjunaweb

20.5
Apps that offer real money gaming (e.g. sports betting, poker, casino games, horse racing) must have necessary licensing and permissions in the locations where the App is used, must be restricted to those locations, and must be free on the App Store
20.6

Apps that use IAP to purchase credit or currency to use in conjunction with real money gaming will be rejected

Can someone that already has an gambling app comment on this? IAP is the primary source of income for such apps, and as far as I understand, we won't be able to submit freemium gambling apps anymore (at least, not easily)

https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html

epsilonthecat

As I understand, this is only about real money gambling apps, i.e. that allow you to make real money bets. Virtual currency apps are not affected.

Mistakenness

And for those of us who have kid's apps on the appstore, we must provide a new update and change the category to the new ones.

tsangwailam

Does appstore have real money gambling apps? Is that not allowed in appstore before and now allowed?

mrpinc

Yes because now in the US businesses can set up legitimate Online betting whereas before this was illegal and all such sites were set up outside the US.

arjunaweb

so, for example, can we still submit slot reel games that use IAP to purchase virtual coins?

skol

Re US online gambling there hasn't been progress in legalisation actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_gambling#United_States

You might use Betable for the UK operations -- they supposedly have gambling operations licence, although they are still working only with big names, afaik.

This article http://www.appsplayground.com/apps/2013/08/19/apple-ios7-app-store-kids-category/ explains what's the in-app parental gate is, which is primary requirement for an app to be accepted into kids category.