If Apple only made better products than their competitors, a case could be made, sure. The problem is things like the 30% shake out on transactions in other apps.
Trotting the 30% tax as an Apple exclusive problem is extremely disengenuous.
Sony, Microsoft and Valve also charge 30% (and have draconian agreements that are even worse than apples).
It’s like Foxxcon all over again; when Apple does the same as everyone else, suddenly it’s a pariah. (For context I’m talking about the suicides at Foxconn due to the abhorrent working conditions, despite the fact that nearly every large OEM and board maker used them: Apple got the most shit).
Sometimes I think the media might have a bit of bias against Apple for some reason.
Not that the criticism isn’t justified, but it’s definitely not levied even handedly.
This makes these two appstores completely incomparable. Enrolling in one is voluntary, and is done by developers because it is beneficial to them, another one is extortion.
Second; while you can sell your program in other places, you may not charge differently than steam. Which makes a lot of sense but is quite hard to grapple with in reality. I think there are cheeky “letter of the law” ways of working around this but obviously Valve don’t want that and then look for other reasons to just drop your entire catalog at random (this was not done by Ubisoft, despite the title and article claiming that: https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-remove-game-steam/)
After all; why go outside of steam if it’s not cheaper?
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm
Some games can be bought on Steam, GoG (DRM-free), and/or their website.
Example:
https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/games-kerbal-space-progra...
https://www.gog.com/en/game/kerbal_space_program
https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Progr...
Since Apple has locked down the platform, they are the price setters: they decide for you that 30% is fair. Seems extortionate to me.
In fact it’s likely by virtue of the platform being so closed that the rate is so high (as my examples are console platforms which also seek to be hermetically sealed environments), so trotting out f-droid as a refutation does little.
Maybe I’m numb to this from working in games; try making a game and avoiding the 30% tax; even on a free and open platform like PC, outside of Epic and some home-grown launchers you’re going to be paying 30%. For consoles; forget about it, that’s the price.
It’s pay to play, and if you don’t want to pay then… don’t, nobody puts a gun to your head any forces you to support the iPhone. At least you have an alternative platform to target that is cheaper (Android).
Where as I got death threats when we put The Division 2 on Epic Games; the public opinion was not a good one: https://reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/ae8vnd/_/ednd9fr/?...
Right? If you don't like their monkeys then don't join their circus! Apple is spending billions of dollars to create their iPhone market that these people then want to tap into and profit from for free! Apple doesn't get paid unless you get paid, distribute your app for free and you don't have to pay Apple anything. Oh, you want to make money? Then you're going to have to pay for that!
If these people don't like it then I suggest they try distributing their software via Walmart, Gamestop, or Staples. Wait, what? You can't access their stores for free to sell your stuff! Say it ain't so!
Frankly I'm tired of this juvenile discussion. These people obviously have no clue as to how retail works and can't see that Apple has actually cut them a hell of a deal! A better deal than you're going to get distributing any product via a traditional retail channel.
Feel free to donate as much money as you want to them though.
However there are other trillion-dollar companies that have free consumer services if that's really the issue (which it isn't). By the way, millions of apps are not monetized and therefore free to host so clearly there's not a critical cost associated with the app store but rather pure profit margin.
Simply allowing the install of additional app stores would solve all these issues and allow for more competitions and the free market to discover the real price of app store services.
Let people install alternative app stores and every single issue is resolved.
Apple may make a large chunk of profit from the iPhone (which only comes from scale, mind you; 1 new iPhone would cost a million dollars to make but 100M copies of a new iPhones only costs ~$40B to make), but the solution can’t be “App Store revenue drops 99%” (which would certainly happen; why would anyone stay with IAP and not switch to PayPal or stripe for a <5% fee?).
Just put a scary looking, click 35 times on this hidden menu option to allow proper sideloading, not this 3 apps for 7 days bullshit.