Question

The app I’m working on was recently rejected by Apple for containing an auto-renewable subscription. They recommended that we switch to non-renewing subscriptions for our content.

The one thing I can’t quite wrap my brain round is how to restore a purchased subscription to a shared device. Apple recommends we don’t use user login – something we would like to avoid ourselves. I did come across one solution where unique codes were used between the two devices – to validate a purchased subscription, through a server. But I believe that could be easily pirated, as in theory friends or employees within a company could share these unique codes with one another and avoid paying the subscription charge.

I can’t really find much on Google about this, and was curious to know if anyone has been able to successfully implement a non-renewing subscription?

Answer 1

To paraphrase the advice we received from Apple when dealing with these issues:

Per the iTunes Connect Developer Guide:

…subscriptions must be provided on all devices associated with a
user. In App Purchase expects subscriptions to be delivered through an
external server that you will provide. You must provide infrastructure
to deliver subscriptions to multiple devices.

Apple consider user registration to be appropriate but won’t allow you to make it obligatory. So registration must be optional and the user must be able to register at any time — including to allow them to share a subscription they’ve already bought between devices.

So it sounds like we may have received slightly different advice. Is it possible that Apple only told you not to require user login in general, separately from the requirement for distributing the subscription to all devices?