question about Gaming, Gambling, and Lotteries

Hello,


I need your opinion before taking a chance to launch our app.

We want to launch an app that delivers exclusive daily images to users. But in order to stimulate the selling of the app we will have a money-prize given to a random winner, when we reach a certain number of customers. The money will be given by us, as a company, and this is called "publicity lottery" in our country and it's different from the regular lottery. A counter showing the number of app-downloads will be shown in the app. What do you think? Will we have problems getting approved?

>will have a money-prize given to a random winner, when we reach a certain number of customers


How do you intend to identify users?

I've read the guidelines but i didn't quite understood were we stand with our app.

5.3 is pretty clear. Apps that offer 'real money gambling' must be free and IAP cannot be used to purchase credit or currency for the gambling. You can't argue that you don't have a 'lottery app' because the user's purchase of the app is their consideration, they have a chance of being selected as winner and if they win they get a prize. You might argue that the user is not providing any consideration in that they pay for the app and get the lottery entry for free. But isn't the app, for example, proced at $2.99 rather than $1.99 because $1.00 is going into the lottery pool?

The US legal definition of gambling is 'consideration, chance and prize'. What may be confusing is the line there that says 'lottery apps must have consideration, chance and a prize.' That may be saying it is not a lottery without those 3 components - the 'must' not being meant as a requirement for the app but rather a limitation on what would be considered a lottery app and therefore subject to 5.3. But no matter, you have all 3.

Nore the part where the guidelines state:

"Only include this functionality if you’ve fully vetted your legal obligations everywhere you make your app available and are prepared for extra time during the review process."


That's where you stand. Pessimistic people reading this thread are going to suspect that you haven't fully vetted your legal obligations (that is, gotten professional paid legal advice that you are following on this matter) and aren't prepared for Apple to look at what you've done, spend extra time reviewing it, and then tell you that you've made a mistake and need to make changes.


At this point you're asking people who aren't legal professionals to tell you whether what you're doing is going to be okay, ignoring important details such as:

- You aren't identifying where you are and where this would be legal

- You aren't providing the specific details needed to verify that what you want to do would work or be legal in your jurisdiction

- Apple doesn't do pre-reviews. You have to build the system you're planning on using, and then submit it for review. "Is this going to be approved?" doesn't work outside of the trivially bad idea cases where the answer is "No, that's not okay."


There are any number of things that you could do incorrectly that would render your app either illegal or just rejected, even if the concept that you're proposing is legal in your current jurisdiction. Please explain how you've accounted for all of those possibilities.

Legal is a always good question. But the guidelines say Apple will not allow gambling apps that are not free or that use IAP to collect funds. So this fails the guidelines whether or not it is legal.

question about Gaming, Gambling, and Lotteries
 
 
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