It's annoying, but it has to do with how Apple bifurcates the free and paid tiers. If you want to get the visibility, you almost have to stick with the free tie

It's annoying, but it has to do with how Apple bifurcates the free and paid tiers. If you want to get the visibility, you almost have to stick with the free tier. Why? Because people are much, much more likely to download something that's free and try it out than even something for a nominal fee, but if you have a separate 'free demo' app, then each app has a separate download count, and suddenly you've got a lot less downloads you would have gotten otherwise (some people would skip the free and download the paid, and a lot less people will download the paid in general anyway). Hardly anyone discovers apps outside the 'featured' and 'top paid' or 'top free' lists on the app store, so any loss in downloads drops you down those top lists, which can cost you a serious loss in potential revenue and is thus unacceptable. Also if you have a free and paid version you're forcing the user to download your game all over again just to purchase it, which adds friction to the purchase, which anyone in sales knows even a single extra click lowers the odds of people buying something by a lot. So the only thing that makes sense for most apps is to make your app free and allow people to spend money in the app to either unlock or acquire something in the game. There are some apps that are better served on the paid tiers, but those are usually apps that have enough visibility (or built-in audience, i.e. Cartoon Network games) and possibly a high enough price on other platforms that people would expect to pay something anyway (i.e. Minecraft Pocket, Square Enix games), or serve a niche audience of people that don't mind paying (i.e. app versions of board games whose prices are set at fraction of the price of buying the physical board game).