After having had the ability to gift songs for so long now it's nice to know that you can finally gift an App to a friend. Generally speaking this was a great new feature for everyone involved, with developers getting a handful of extra sales from people pushing products for them and for consumers who now had more options for gifts.

So what's so sinister about the Gift feature? Nothing on the face of it, but if you're a crafty company you could drop the price of your App to 'Free', gift your App to customers who have given you their email, then watch as your game rockets up the charts. Initially this sounds like a great idea, with customers getting free apps and developers getting almost free advertising thanks to being on the App Store's front page, but then things have the potential to get messy.

Pam Douglas, a lawyer for Glenn Corpse Ltd explains the downsides:

"The issue is two-fold. Firstly, it's biased in favour of those with deep pockets and obviously, the deeper the pockets, the bigger the potential chart impact. Secondly, it reinforces customers' expectation that, if they are patient, they may eventually have their coveted apps without paying for them."

For the full article, head over to Pocket Gamer.

via Pocketgamer.biz