In announcing its latest app initiative Wednesday, Amazon put an italicized emphasis on the fact that apps and games in the new "Amazon Underground" section are "actually free" for Android devices. That means users can go on an in-app purchase shopping spree for all of the chapters, items, options, and "energy" they want, while developers get pennies on the hour in exchange for giving up their beloved monetization plan.

Amazon Underground promises that its offerings are really, truly, and wholly free. Formerly paid apps cost nothing, while former freemium apps no longer ring users up for however many in-app purchases they make. Want fifty gazillion "coins" that would normally cost $100 of real cash, or free versions of productivity software, solid games like Goat Simulator, or kids' fare from the Sesame Workshop? They're yours for the taking. Amazon reminds you at every checkout opportunity how much you're not paying.

While you might expect that this new system would have developers launching social media campaigns about getting ripped off, Amazon made very clear that game and app creators whose livelihoods depended on IAPs would still get paid: "We're paying developers a certain amount on a per-minute-played basis in exchange for them waiving their normal in-app fees," the company's announcement stated. "We're the one picking up those per-minute charges."

The public announcement itself didn't clarify how much devs would get paid, but an Amazon developer resource site confirmed the amount: $0.002 per minute of use, or one penny for every five minutes. The company also went so far as to offer interested devs a revenue calculator to determine whether this model would make a company more cash than they'd made with traditional purchases.

We grabbed a couple of good, IAP-powered Underground apps—Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride—and went on pseudo-spending sprees, only to see that Amazon did indeed foot the bill, letting us know how many dollars we would have spent on ludicrous numbers of in-game coins. Even better, we could sign in online, make those purchases, and then go into airplane mode and play the games (while spending in-game coins) without any Amazon meddling.

As the dev resource site states, Amazon Underground apps track usage both online and offline (which counts as "the amount of time that an Android Activity for your app is open and running in the foreground of a mobile device") and then upload that data to Amazon's servers once they've reconnected to the Internet to determine how much app makers should get paid. Devs are warned that should an app crash, the tracked stats may not be sent to Amazon—so, good luck to any devs wrestling with the thorny Android ecosystem.

(Worth noting: the dev resource site for Amazon Underground also speaks at length about best practices for changing IAP systems should entirely free IAPs break a particular game's challenge or replayability, and it's a fascinating read. In particular, we laud Amazon for telling its Underground devs to remove all timer countdowns for unlocking certain types of game content.)

Still, we have to wonder, why would Amazon foot such a potentially large bill—one that they're advertising as "over $10,000 in free apps and games"? It may have something to do with the new gateway to the Amazon Underground selection—meaning, the free games and app content come at the price of hella Amazon product advertisements—but the company's new app demonstrates just how bloated Amazon's app ecosystem has become.

Wait, which app do I use?













The new app, simply titled Amazon, requires a direct download from Amazon's site along with a requirement to change Android settings to allow the installation of apps from "unknown developers." This was how the company's Amazon App Store app worked, as well. Recall that Amazon launched its own App Store app with a "free app of the day" promotion to encourage people to jump through its installation hoops.

The old App Store still works, but its free-app banner has been replaced with a promo for Amazon Underground (and its new, required app). Once you load the new app, you'll find the same App Store functionality, including sales charts and "my apps" cloud listings, but its interface now mirrors the Amazon Shopping app, meaning it offers big, bright suggestions and listings for real-life products.

Get ready for more confusion: today's new app is wholly different from December's new Amazon shopping app, which is called Prime Now. Should you be an Amazon Prime subscriber and live in a region where Amazon offers one-hour and two-hour product delivery, you can use the app to look up quick-ship goods (as of yesterday, this means booze in the company's home base of Seattle) and order them. This app does exist on iOS devices, which is good, because—ugh—you can't make such Prime Now purchases from a standard web browser. However, the Android-exclusive app makes no mention of Prime Now.

Today's new app also contains video listings from both its paid and Amazon Prime catalogs—and you can use this app to buy videos—but as soon as you try to watch any of them, you're told to go back and download the Amazon Instant Video app. Given that today's Amazon app goes so far as to include a "continue watching" tab, we found this design move particularly confusing.

The new app also makes no mention of certain Amazon offerings like Prime Cloud, and it makes awkward references to opening discrete apps like Prime Photos and Kindle when attempting to use such functionality. While we understand that some apps require more distinct ecosystems to run efficiently, we wonder why offerings like Amazon Local, the company's Groupon-like service, have to remain a separate app as well.

Ultimately, the new app still shoves a lot more Amazon-related content down users' throats than they may care for, which we assume was the whole point of this massive giveaway. But the hoops required for installing this app alone are confusing enough. Having to juggle so many discrete apps just to figure out how to use Amazon is the kind of workflow confusion that would have made sense even a few years ago; in 2015, the mess is inexcusable. In the meantime, good thing we have a bunch of free apps to wash the mess down with.

This article has been updated to correct errors about Amazon's Prime Now app.