Big Fish Games First to Have Gaming Subscriptions, Pulled from App Store.
Big Fish Games out of Seattle, WA. was able to get approval from Apple to allow it's new game subscription business model to show in the App Store for iOS devices. The model works like a subscription to Netflix essentially, allowing you to pay a monthly fee for access to all of it's games for iOS. The subscription will cost just $4.99 this year, with plans to boost it to $6.99 in 2012. Apple would receive 30% of the monthly subscriptions paid for through the App Store.
There's just one problem now...Apple pulled the Big Fish Subscription from it's App Store already. According to Paul Thelen, Big Fish Games founder, the subscription idea took a while for Apple to push through the approval stages. Thelen said, "It took longer than usual to be approved... They needed to be convinced there’s a reason to charge customers every month.”
It seems strange that Apple took a while to approve and then pull down, as they do allow users to pay for monthly magazine use through iBooks. Apple has not commented yet as to the reason for pulling the App after approving it, but it seems like they may not be convinced this is a good idea after all.
Big Fish also has plans to launch the same type of subscription ability for Android and SmartTV's in the coming months. No doubt, Google will allow this to go through without a hitch.
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