978880 - Hiding or flagging apps with new in-app payments

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Marketplace Graveyard :: Payments/Refunds, defect, P3)

Description

[Andy McKay]

The new easier in-app payment process requires APIs added into Firefox 29. That means if an app uses the new in-app payment system and you are on an old device eg Firefox 1.1 it won't work.

Should we flag or hide that app in the marketplace at all?

Comment 1

[Lisa Brewster [:adora]]

For a sense of scale, today there are currently 40-50 apps that would be impacted by this, and almost all of those applications are from the same developer.  Two apps are free with IAP, and the rest are paid with IAP.  These numbers will grow over time as more developers add IAP.  I don't have numbers on how many people are still using FxOS v1.1 and how soon updates will be made available.

A free app with IAP likely has some value to users, and not being able to purchase additional content is an annoyance that has at worst wasted the user's time.

A paid app with IAP also likely has some value, but not being able to purchase content for something you've already paid for could waste time AND money.

From my experience, users in mixed support scenarios would rather still see the content rather than having it be hidden, so they can make the choice themselves.  My ideal, pro-user-empowerment solution would be to leave the apps on Marketplace and show a banner to v1.1 users that says you can download the app, but IAP won't work.  Backup solution would be to advise developers to put this disclaimer in their app description, but it will be hard to enforce consistently and makes them carry the burden of fragmentation.

Comment 2

[Andy McKay]

(In reply to Lisa Brewster [:adora] from comment #1)
> My ideal, pro-user-empowerment solution would be to leave the
> apps on Marketplace and show a banner to v1.1 users that says you can
> download the app, but IAP won't work.

Sounds good to me. We'd need to add in a flag to the API to say the app is using the new in-app payments and then the appropriate message on the app descriptions page for the right clients. Perhaps we could add a premium type to the API:

http://firefox-marketplace-api.readthedocs.org/en/latest/topics/apps.html#app-response-label

Comment 3

[Andrew Williamson [:eviljeff]]

+ A new premium type

Comment 4

[Andrew Williamson [:eviljeff]]

+1 to a new premium type - and change the text around the old one to say its deprecated.

We can feature detect the new API, right?

Comment 5

[Andy McKay]

I think bug 1021918 invalidates this.