Apps with registration

If you make the login optional you will be ok. If you require login and if that requires an email address then you fail:

17.2 Apps that require users to share personal information, such as email address and date of birth, in order to function will be rejected

What about 17.5? Apps that include account registration or access a user’s existing account must include a privacy policy or they will be rejected

What about it?

You said "I do have a privacy policy in the app as well as a privacy policy on our website".

If it's not up to snuff, app review will most likely let you know.

Thanks for the feedback. I went and researched all of the top Multiplayer games such as, Words With Friends, Trivia Crack, other Zynga with Friends apps and set it up the exact same way they did. I know that is not a valid argument, but was trying to mimic what others are doing. Should be going into review today or tomorrow so I will let you know what happens.

Turns out one of the apps was accepted and the other rejected. Both same setup.

So, I have it setup similar to other major multiplayer apps. We request an email if new and then we automatically create an account for them. We use the registration because we are tracking their games currently in progress, keeping stats for them, as well as their score and where they are in the game. So the registration is relevant to the user for as it goes out to our database to get all this info. Its also so that they can play the game on all their iOS devices and just pick up from one to the next.

Any suggestions on a way around this?

Brian

>We use the registration because we are tracking their games currently in progress, keeping stats for them, as well as their score and where they are in the game.

Isn't that what GC is for?

At the risk of repeating myself - make the registration optional. Tell the users "registration is optional but you can't ....(all the stuff you wrote above)... if you don't register". Perhaps Apple will overlook the potential for getting around 11.1 /11.2 if you make registration optional. Of course that was not your intent - but how can you actually prove that? You can't; and requiring registration casts a questionable light on your real intention.

You can do everything you describe by generating a unique key to associate with the saved data without requiring registration or personal information like an email address. If users want to fully register they can do this later. Apple steers developers in this direction for good reason.

Except this doesn't link the user using device X with the same user using a different device Y. That can be done (only within iOS) using the key-value file on iCloud.

Yes, this is a multiplatform app and I understand apple doesnt really like that, this is why I did not use GC.

The issue for rejection was

17.2 Details

We noticed that your app requires users to register to access non account-based features. Apps cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app content and features that are not associated specifically to the user.

I guess I dont understand the statement "Apps cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app content and features that are not associated specifically to the user" WHen the user registers they are picking a character that is associated to them, they play the trivia game as this character and therefore we are storing this information specifically for this user. This among a lot of other things. We are not asking for age, or anything else.

Yes, I realize we can change it to not ask for anything, create a user for them when they first come in, and then ask the user to register later. What happens if the user accidentily deletes the app or goes to a new device without backup then they lose everything. Allowing the registration prevents this from happening.

I repsonded back trying to plead my case with them, I guess I will wait and see. As I said, they accepted one of them and rejected the other. Very inconsistent.

So just as a final follow up. I did explain to the original reviewer the intention of the registration and why I believed it was needed.

The reviewer picked the apps up again reviewed them and approved them!

So I did not have to change anything and the apps were approved.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I appreciate it!

Good info, thanks for the follow up and good luck in the store.