The Free version of our Facebook Gift Collector for iPhone was a nifty way to offer a service free of charge. There was just a small nonintrusive iAD on the gift list. If the device was unable to load the iAD you just get the full application, no hassles.

It bothers me removing it from the store, but we realized that its user feedback was harmful for our image. While the paid version has a 70% 5 stars rating, and less than 5% 1 star rating, the free version has these figures reversed. So we have 70% of 1 star ratings… for the exact same application, that’s baffling.

The thing that really bugged us though was a couple of bad reviews reporting it as a scam. That’s where we draw a line. It’s true that Facebook’s API doesn’t support the handling of requests (making our job 10 times harder), so we had to do it our way, login process included, but as we stated in the app’s “Privacy” section, we DO NOT store or use the login credentials in any way that can be harmful for the user (that can be easily proved with a packet sniffer).

Being insulted while offering a service for free… well, it’s just not worth it. I’m sorry for the people that supported us, but as of today, the Free version will cease to exist on the App Store.

Links:

EFlatGames: http://www.eflatgames.com/

Facebook Gift Collector for iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/app/facebookgiftcollector/id408732335?mt=8