Ah, the ever-increasing difference between "free" and "free-to-play".
The longer this goes on the harder it will be to stop/reverse.
Yes, it's a business model which can gets the developer more money, but so is racketeering and gambling and all kinds of user-unfriendly models.
Apple need to pull their finger out. They're responsible for a lot of this trend.
First they refused to allow trials/demos. The idea was that the App description would be all-important - but Apple didn't do enough in that area, either. No embedded videos mean that users don't get a good enough idea of how an App works.
This is where in-app purchases came from. Once the business model changed, the games had to change to fit the business model. By most accounts, these games are much less fun because they revolve around power-ups and constantly nag you for money. That's not to mention games that are totally abusive and change the rules of the game in-flight to tempt you to buy add-ons.
The AppStore is
not good enough. It's been six years now, and we still have no clear paid upgrade mechanism or trial/demo system. What we have instead is a bunch of "games" that are basically disguised slot-machines.
Apple need to step up their game. Unfortunately developers have no choice of distribution on iOS, so we can't use competition to force them on. If you're unhappy with Apple's statuesque pace of progress on the AppStore your only choice is to ditch the entire platform.
