Last week a group of developers banded together to celebrate pricing freedom by launching the Because We May promotion. The promotion, which ends June 1, includes heavily discounted games across multiple platforms. Since its launch, Because We May has received great support and the list of games available has grown tremendously.
A group of developers have banded together to celebrate their freedom to price their games how they like within specific online stores. Most online app stores give developers this freedom, but others such as the Amazon App Store do not. Amazon allows a developer to set a recommended price for their app but reserves the right to change that price whenever they want. I can’t really think of another app store besides the Amazon App Store, so this coalition almost feels like an anti-Amazon App Store celebration to me.
Evernote is planning on giving away over $100,000 in prizes in its second annual worldwide developer competition: the Evernote Devcup. Devcup challenges software developers and designers to create awesome products that integrate with the Evernote API for desktop, mobile or the web. The competition, which opens in 4 days, will award developers with over $100,000 in prizes and give finalists the chance to present their work to the attendees at Evernote’s Trunk Conference in San Francisco.
Google has added four new countries to the list from which Android developers can sell their products. Developers from the following countries can now sell their applications and in-app products on Google Play, using their local bank accounts for payments:
While the majority of app markets have already adopted this digital scheme, Amazon has just today announced the open availability of their in-app purchasing API. The in-app purchasing API will allow developers to offer digital content to its users in the form of microstransactions. Content such as expansion packs, weapon upgrades, etc. become available to purchase from within the app and usually cost less than a dollar. This monetization model has gained much traction as of late and while the majority of developers implement it in a morally acceptable manner, others simply try to nickel-and-dime users by making their apps virtually useless unless you pony up for the additional content.
