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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

This is a blatant attempt by Apple to extra their 30% rent on business that happens outside of their App Store. It's shocking that one of the wealthiest companies in the world acts this way towards small developers and companies.

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> It's shocking that one of the wealthiest companies in the world acts this way towards small developers and companies.

It’s not shocking at all. Corporations pull this kind of shit constantly.

This is corporate strategy running amok. Clearly the whole app review has been scaled up and is now using less than stellar resources quite possibly unfamiliar with the OS and basics of business beyond the training they received.

I think you're misunderstanding this rule. If I made a phone game where there was a "store" where I could buy physical stickers but each sticker pack came with a code for 10,000 in-game coins Apple would see that as just a way to get around paying 30% for something digital.

And if the only way to get in-game coins was by buying stickers off-app Apple would say you have to offer buying them in-app too as an IAP.

Yeah, when a rule has all these bizarre apparent loopholes and where the rule-setter needs to examine the implied intent of the action... it might be a bad rule.

I think any system of rules is going to look weird and organic when they have millions of people trying to rule lawyer the system.

Like the basic tenant of “we take a 30% cut of the sale of all digital goods on our platform” is pretty straightforward, you only run into weird rules when you try find ways around it.

How are we trying to find way around it? We don't want to sell anything via IAP because it does not make sense in our app. But somehow we are forced to do it.

Look, I don't at all think you're trying to get away with something -- I think you're caught up in weird rule that was intended to plug the loophole of "selling a stick of gum that comes with a free bottle of water." From the reviewer's perspective they see that when personal trainers sell their services to clients they're also selling your/their white-label app. To Apple that's a sale of digital goods and they want their pound of flesh. The fact that it's bundled with an IRL service doesn't seem to matter to them.

You might be able to get away with skirting this rule if your white-label app is just a client to a fitness tracking service. Then it should fall under the same rules as Netflix and other "reader" apps.

tenant (occupant or renter) -> tenet (principle or belief)

fwiw, multiple big games I can think of do exactly what you described and are still on the iOS store. At least one of them brings in millions USD a month AND the out-of-app-only purchase flow is a huge money maker. Google lets them get away with it too, though, so it might just be a "big companies obey a different set of rules" situation.

I have been thinking of using this loophole for ages but have never seen it done. Mind sharing the name of the game?

Granblue Fantasy is in the iOS store and not only has bonuses for direct purchases (through their website) but sells lots of physical merch at a large mark-up with pack-in serial codes used for getting game content. There's a sizable chunk of their playerbase that goes out and buys everything - when they put something out it tops the Amazon.jp charts every time

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