Hey gang, so I am having a Kickstarter soon for my game. I want to give away free copies of the game as a reward tier but iOS and Android don't have any kind of voucher or coupon system.

I can think of 2 work-arounds. Either release the game for free and put up a "pay $5 to unlock full game" screen after about an hour of gameplay, in which you can also input a voucher code I make.

Or I charge for the game (lets pretend $5) and in the game there is a screen where you can enter a voucher code I make up and you can get a $5 refund.

Does one of these sound like a good option or is there some other way I haven't considered?

Thank you!

Google won't care if you do a promo code to unlock the game but Apple will certainly reject you if they come across it in testing. Now I do know of a couple of apps that have gotten through with promo codes. I don't know if they just didn't come across it during testing or the tester was having a good day and just didn't care. But we tried to add a promo code for in game items that could easily be obtained through normal game play and got rejected. Now if you did it an hour in to the game then that might be long enough Apple doesn't come across it but you can never tell and they might find it later and pull your game when you are trying to do an update.

You really need to use Apple's promo code system but that is not without its issues. If you are doing Paypal refunds you will probably end up losing money from conversion rates and transaction fees.

Both of your workarounds go against Apples T&Cs and could get your app rejected from review. There are two ways of doing it properly. Either Gift your app (which doesn't work across territories) or request promo codes from Apple.