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Comment by MobileVet | Hacker News Reader

I am curious if any businesses operating with the ‘pay Apple their cut’ on outside sales actually do?

Does Apple have the manpower to chase every developer for that fee? Do they really expect to collect it or is it more of a threat?

Any HN people with first hand knowledge of a business paying that fee?

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Given the zeal Apple has for their 30%, they absolutely will be demanding fully open books and tracking for that outbound link.

There's no firsthand knowledge because this is the first time Apple's actually had to chase companies for the fee. In fact, their whole argument against Epic was that banning steering made it easier on both parties to attribute revenue.

Privacy can take backseat ?

Apple likely has a pretty good idea of how many downloads you have, and if users enable "Share with Apple Developers" in settings -> privacy -> analytics, their App Store Connect database definitely has usage and open analytics. Mobile app games likely won't be able to claim "we only made $30k this month on iOS" if they have >1M downloads a month or 100k app opens a day, for example.

Good point. Forgot that they have all the data…

It is more for the other bigger corporations that will have more to lose, and will be flagged via outside auditors, that will pay it accurately.

If Apple can track your outside sales they can just deduct it from any Apple Store payments. So maybe not exactly a chase for that portion of it.

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