Will Android LVL licensing still work after converting from paid to free app

Question

If I convert my paid app which is verified through LVL licensing, to free, can I still use LVL licensing to detect if a user bought the app while it was still a paid app? I.e. Will the licensing function still detect if the user once paid for the app even if it is now free?

From the Google Licensing documentation:

The licensing service is based on the capability of the Google Play licensing server to determine whether a given user is licensed to use a given application. Google Play considers a user to be licensed if the user is a recorded purchaser of the application.

It's not very clear in the documentation what happens if the app is converted to free. Does it still keep a record of if the user purchased the app?

Thanks

Faunia

Hi, did you find an answer to this question? I'm also looking into ways to convert a PAID app into a FREEMIUM one with a seamless transition process for the existing customers who already paid for the app. Is LVL the right approach to check if the user bought the paid version before it was set to FREE? – Glide

@devdroid I have a very similar problem - I also need to convert my users. I specifically need to check inside my FREE app (it was always free) if a this current user has ever purchased my another PAID unlocker app. Is it possible with this LVL to check purchase state of a different app? – Fransen

Answer 1

I just tried this out and here's what I found:

Once you make the app free, you can still use App Licensing, but all users will receive the same timestamps (essentially same response but with different userId) regardless of whether they purchased the app when paid, or installed it when free. This response has VT (validity timestamp) set to Long.MAX_VALUE. See here.

Therefore, you should attempt to grab licensing responses for as many users as possible before you make the app free. However, when determining if the user actually paid for the app, make sure you check (and discard) those Long.MAX_VALUE responses because those would be users using an old app version after the app has been made free.

So is there any point using the App Licensing library after making the app free? Yes, because you can use it grab the userId and then use that as a key to lookup (in your own database) any cached responses you have from the paid days.

Marcelo

Hi Mark, I have a very similar problem - I need to check inside my FREE app (it was always free) if a this specific user has ever purchased my another PAID unlocker app. Is it possible with this LVL to check purchase state of a different app? – Fransen

You can just communicate between your apps using a content provider – Marcelo

could you please elaborate? From my understanding, you can only communicate between 2 apps if they are both currently installed on the device. What I want is to check from app A if app B was EVER purchased - and it is quite possible that app B might not currently be installed on the device (in case a user changes the device, etc...) even though it has been purchased – Fransen

Oh sorry I misunderstood. I don't know if that can be done. If it can I would like to know how! Ideally, I'd want to be able to simply access Google Play licensing data and query it directly across all users. – Marcelo

I see. It is urgent for me too - since I have a DONATION app, and FREE app, and I want to add some paid function and in-app into FREE app. But, I absolutely need to grant full access to those users who already bought DONATION app...It's quite an elementary functionality, hard to believe it's not possible. And I can't solve this on individual basis, since I have ~thousands of donations... – Fransen

I also added this issue, though I'm not sure if it's useful to your use case: issuetracker.google.com/issues/300210222 – Marcelo