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I want to integrate In-App billing in the free version of my game, to allow user purchase the full version from the free version itself. I already got In-App billing working and I could easily make additional items in game available. The problem is I don't know what to do to start download of full version of the game and to actually purchase the full version from the market.

pnuts
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Žan Kusterle
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    Before doing any in app upgrading of your app, I would recommend reading about this current lawsuit http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/google-android-lodsys-patent/ – Ashterothi Aug 17 '11 at 22:16

1 Answers1

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To the best of my understanding, you can't use IAB to purchase a different application (full vs free). It's only used for purchasing 'items' for that particular application. What you could do is use it to:

  1. verify a purchase of 'upgrade' to full app, and when you start up you re-verify each time locally, and if the upgrade is valid, you remove in-game advertising, so it's now the 'non-free' version. Something like that.
  2. verify purchase, and then start to download full content pack, 'locked' to the device.
  3. verify purchase, and then 'unlock' content already built-into the free version.

I'm guessing 1 and 3 will be most popular. 2 requires separate server for content, but once you have a server you can also better secure your purchases (have the server run the verify step, so your public key doesn't exist inside the app), and the content could be 'server-signed' for just that device/user-account (or something similar, so can't just copy content to another device).

davebytes
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  • I've also been thinking about the first and third options. But if there are both free and full version on the market, after upgrade the full version will still remain unpurchased... In other words, the user will still receive updates for free version only and he could purchase full version from the market "again" if he would want to. – Žan Kusterle Aug 17 '11 at 21:39
  • Yes, you'd have two separate app versions, the variance being one has content pre-unlocked or has no-ads already. Alternative is to only ever ship a free app, and let people upgrade to either no-ads, or unlocked content, then only have one app to track ever. My gut says we may see more of that latter case. – davebytes Aug 18 '11 at 16:46
  • oh, further alternative is skip IAB, and have a link to a market intent that launches to the full version of the app... that's what many people do already. and yes, still two app versions in that case too. :) – davebytes Aug 18 '11 at 16:48