Tech giant Apple's App Store now rebuffing apps with reference price

In a recent development it is being found that that tech giant ‘Apple’ is rebuffing applications that have the price mentioned in the name, icons, screenshots, or previews. The company now hurls a fault message to all developers that try to add the price in the above mentioned metadata categories while submitting an app for review.

Many of the app developers like to place ‘Free’ as their big USP, and cite it in their app name, and have it in their logo as well. However, according to VentureBeat, the company is now declining applications that come with the word ‘Free’ or mention the price of the app in any way. As per the report, the company steadily started this practice of rejection since last month, stopping developers from using the price value in the title, icons, screenshots, and previews. When a developer tries to tender an application for review, and the title has the word ‘free’ or ‘discount’ in it, the developer will receive as error message explaining that the price is not allowed to be a part of the metadata. Instead, the company cheer the developers to underline the price in the description.

The fault message reads as, “Your app’s name, icons, screenshots, or previews to be displayed on the App Store include references to your app’s price, which is not considered a part of these metadata items. Please remove any references to your app’s price from your app’s name, including any references to your app being free or discounted. If you would like to advertise changes to your app’s price, it would be appropriate to include this information in the app description. Changes to your app’s price can be made in the Pricing and Availability section of iTunes Connect.”

To shed more light, a spokesperson from Apple also confirmed the change, but didn’t mention about reason for change of policy. Still, it is no clear that whether apps that live with price titles in the App Store will be asked to modify their names or the rule is pertinent on the new ones.

The tech giant has been cleaning up the App Store recently, and last year it even proclaied that it would eliminate dormant or tricky apps from the Store, and went on to remove 50,000 apps from the App Store in October.