Frequenty Asked Questions
Q: How do the players react if two players see different prices? I’m worried that this will bring negative talk on user forums.
A: Unlike the competitors and traditional A/B -testing done by your internal analytics team, Apprien shows always the same price to all players, in a single country, at any given time. The price might change after 15minutes (or the next day if you want to slow the optimization down), so on our system this is not an issue.
Apprien does support segmentation of users, but for most games, country (and/or channel) based segmentation is sufficient.
Q: How do the players in Player vs. Player games react to changing prices?
A: Apprien has been previously used to sell Counter-Strike servers. The key is to be open and honest to your customers and show in what direction the prices are going to. All players see the same prices in a certain country at the same time, so the pricing is fair and equal to all players.
Q: Which countries do you represent?
A: Apprien is not an advertisement network, but an automated pricing tool to optimize the In-App Products (IAP) pricing. Apprien works globally in all countries where Google Play and Apple iTunes is presented. In addition Apprien can be used for any other platform or store, but it needs a more custom integrations. We are happy to assist in doing integration.
Q: How does changing of prices affect the in-game economics?
A: You can set minimum and maximum prices to limit the effects of automated pricing to your in-game economics and experience? If Apprien prices your products at your higher limit, you should reconsider your product design for the next release, whether you should rebalance the game. If Apprien prices your product at the bottom limit, you should redesign the product by adding more value for to players.
Q: Do we need to create a new build for each price setting and country?
A: No, Apprien SDK will automatically change the prices without need to do any new builds.
Q: If the user has Apple account in Germany, and he flies to Russia, and he keeps playing during the whole flight, how Apprien knows that the prices should be in Russian roubles?
A: As long as your Apple/Google account is registered in Germany, Apprien will show German prices. It won’t show you Russian prices even though that you are currently visiting Moscow.
Q: If I don’t want to do country-based pricing, how Apprien works?
A: You can also set a single price to Apple iTunes/Google Play, and let Apple to use the fixed price tiers for other countries. However, we advise against this since the purchasing power parity in various countries differs greatly, and will result in sub-optimal revenue.
Q: Instead of countries, I want to use region based pricing.
A: Apprien API has locationId (or segmentation) that you can use to distinguish different regions.
Q: Can we select the people who are in the control group?
A: No, the people in the control group are selected randomly. The SDK takes the device ID, and calculates a 8-bit hash with 256 different groups. Currently 25% of the players are assigned to the test cohort randomly. The test cohort should be sticky, so the players will always be either in the test
Q: How do you handle 3rd party / customer information at Apprien ?
A: Apprien handles all customer or 3rd party information with atmost care and confidentiality according to GDPR, LATI legislation for telecom operators and all other relevant legal aspects. We also have NDA`s in place with all our customers. The access to customer data is restricted to only those who need it for the customer work and projects.
Q: We don’t have time to add new SDKs or change prices, because we are working on important features
A: Is the feature that you are working on going to give you better than 20% more income every single day? What is your hit rate of new features delivering 20% more revenue, of your five latest features?