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Comment by _xnmw | Hacker News Reader

Apple's App Store policy is unbelievably ridiculously hubristic. Imagine if Google/Microsoft charged you 30% of your entire business just because you ran it on top of Excel/Sheets and Gmail/Outlook. Or if Adobe took a 30% royalty from all artists creative works. It's madness, plain and simple. Developers already pay an annual fee to publish to the App Store, and consumers pay massive dollar to buy their iDevices. And yet they still have the nerve to demand 30% of entire business revenue, and charge a tax even when conducted outside of the App Store (so-called Core Technology Fee)? Even most governments in the world don't tax out-of-jurisdiction income.

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Not only Apple charges their tax but they decide if you can distribute your iOS code to users.

You can work for a year on an app for iPhone or iPad and then not be able to distribute it if Apple doesn't want to. This is not even hypothetical.

Apple owns 30% of your business but has 100% control of it.

> You can work for a year on an app for iPhone or iPad and then not be able to distribute it if Apple doesn't want to.

Happened to my company.

At the time they had no guidelines on sending "tips" digitally, and when we asked for an exception (before building) we were granted it.

Submission day, rejected.

Cue 3 months of back and forth, which ended with "yeah, you gotta use IAP for that, and we're gonna take 30% from the tips."

> Imagine

Google's Play Store and Microsoft's Xbox charge the same as Apple's App Store.

Microsoft's Windows Store charges less, but nobody uses it store anyway.

Because side-loading is a thing that works well on Windows.

Not only works well, but is the default accepted way of installing applications.

That's true, but on the other hand you have Steam, et al. that are popular in spite of that. Or the Mac App Store on macOS.

30% is arguably justified for some tangible goods, depending on the value add of the channel(s) for sales & distribution.

But digital goods? Thievery.

Tell that to Steam, which is generally well liked by developers and users alike.

There's clearly something else going on than just the 30% number, and it's worth investigating what that is rather than fixating on the wrong thing.

It's never actually been about the 30%, it's just that that's the easiest manifestation. It's Apple's insistance to insert themselves into the relationship between developers and their users.

The fee could be next-to-free and many would still be upset if they're not able to use their own payments infrastructure. Developers are not able to offer customers refunds on IAP or discounts or credits.

Steam demonstrates that it's not about the 30%. It shows how 30% is viable in a competetive market if it's what consumers (and developers) prefer.

The difference here is that you don't have to use Steam. For example, Epic Games is doing just fine providing downloads for Fortnite themselves.

Yep, so the problem isn't how much they're charging at all, it's the tight lock down.

I like your sibling comment's summation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40776710

In the world of physical products, brick and mortar stores will take 40-50% of the revenue for selling your product. This is the norm. Even worse, production, shipping, and accounting all also cost vastly more.

So while the 30% take of the app store is likely too much, you can't really do an "imagine if" because actually prior to the software industry things were far far far more difficult.

Yeah but physical products are hard work, and cost a lot to store, move and display properly. Yet you can still sell directly to consumer if you wish. Software distribution costs basically nothing on the internet, AND Apple makes it impossible to sell directly to the user.

Sure, putting files on a CDN is very cheap. But, point of sales is a massive pain in the ass. Updates are a massive pain in the ass, notifying users of updates and security patches, not to mention marketing. These things are such a huge pain that I can see why a platform would charge more than pennies for them.

Facing building out exactly this stuff myself using Stripe, a traditional website, building in licensing keys, etc etc. If something like the app store were multi-platform and had a bit more support around offline licensing and things like upgrade pricing, then honestly I would not immediately discount it even at 30% cut. Especially if I got some marketing out of it too.

You can argue wether 30% is the right number, but what the app store provides is definitely not "basically nothing".

Imagine if Steam took 30% of all sales on their platform! Or if Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft charged developers 30% for online app sales! (Spoiler: they all do).

There are lots of things worth criticizing about Apple's model, but I'll never understand the fixation on the 30% rule. They provide a distribution platform that is every bit as robust and has a much larger reach than the video game consoles, and if they want to charge the same prices as the consoles I don't see why that's the hill to die on when there are so many other things that are more obviously rotten.

Steam is one of the many app stores I can use.

Not the only one.

Meanwhile Apple forces their app store down their customers throat. And charges for the forced privilege.

Consoles are not general purpose devices. But I wouldn't mind if EU went after them as well

> Steam is one of the many app stores I can use.

> Not the only one.

A) For the video game consoles this isn't true, they have full control just like Apple does.

B) Like I said, there are better hills to die on. App store monopoly is one that makes more sense to me (though I still actually disagree with the mainstream HN consensus on it).

> A) For the video game consoles this isn't true, they have full control just like Apple does.

You can still go to any physical retail store and buy a game developed by a 3rd party. Yes that 3rd Party company had to pay a license fee to release the game on the hardware but you can still choose where you want to buy that game from, including any sales or discounts that retailer might see fit to try to gain your custom.

Which is a right that Apple was willing to concede, but people flipped out when they announced you'd still have to pay the fee.

Consoles get a pass for things that Apple gets raked over the coals for. There's clearly something more going on than just "these specific behaviors are unacceptable always", which is the simplified take that gets popular on HN.

>Which is a right that Apple was willing to concede

Begrudgly and in a way that is very much viewed as malicious compliance, hence them now being investigated for it.

>but people flipped out when they announced you'd still have to pay the fee

I agree with them

When I buy an App from the app store, Apple should take a cut for providing the infrastructure, payment system etc, thats fair.

If I am buying something from a company directly from their website or marketplace, for a service they provide in that app, why should I pay Apple a fee?

> If I am buying something from a company directly from their website or marketplace, for a service they provide in that app, why should I pay Apple a fee?

Ok, but explain to me why it is ok for Sony to charge a license fee to release a game that is only sold in retail stores as physical copies, while it is not ok for Apple to charge a similar fee?

The parent's point is that HN goes all frothy-mouthed about the $0.50/download fee from Apple, and then uses pretzel logic to justify why it is ok for Playstation/Xbox/Nintendo to do the exact same thing.

The main difference is that the agreement between Sony and publisher only covers publishers first sale of the material, and their agreements only cover direct revenue share / static prices per unit from publisher.

It does not limit publisher in any way how they want to sell the physical copies, it does absolutely not apply to non-first-sale (depending on the structure of distribution, the box you see in a retail store might already be beyond first sale).

It also does not setup any limits on publishers activities that do not involve Sony licensed IP.

It's similar to how many vendors had revenue share licensing on their products in the past, which is legally distinct from flat percentage applied to distribution channel and limits on said distribution channel

n.b. Sony has, apparently, since PS4 sometimes been cheaper to develop for, in terms of non-revenue-share pricing, than Apple - often providing no-cost loaners for smaller teams.

source on Sony terms: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1821175/000149315220...

I think that the issue here is that every person and their grandma has an iphone, and so they are a bigger target. Pretty much every single person in the western world has a mobile phone, and the majority of those are iPhones.

No matter how hard you try to compare this to the console market, its apples and oranges. The amount of xboxes sold and the market they are sold to just pales in insignificance compared to Apples domination of the world.

Also the gaming world has a much shittier nemesis, gambling. The loot box and microtransaction scandals have overshadowed any issues with store fees. I feel if these things hadnt been so big over the last decade, there would have been much more focus on the payment issues of app stores.

As a kicker, I feel that the courts would probably argue that the console world is very specific to gaming, and therefore is a much more targetted audience. Phones have apps for everrything that run your life, hell you cant even get a bus ticket or do any banking where Im from if you dont have a smart phone. So it is much more of a lifestyle device which is required to live in the modern age, whereas consoles are purely entertainment.

>App store monopoly is one that makes more sense to me

Am I misreading this, or are you advocating for a monopoly? In what world is a monopoly better for consumers?

Steam also leans on the same anticompetitive "most-favored nation" agreements as Amazon. Sure, you don't have to list on Steam... but if you do, you better not try to go around their cut and list elsewhere at a lower price, either.

They have very positive mindshare with gamers but at the end of the day gaben's not your buddy either.

Steam lets you sell Steam keys directly or via a third party and they take a 0% cut. That's how places like greenman gaming, humble bundle, etc work. You still get to use all Steam's infrastructure but pay no fee.

that's a mechanism intended to grant keys to reviewers and such, you can't use that as a primary transaction mechanism. steam has an unspecified threshold at which they will kick you off the platform for abusing that, they aren't there to be a free delivery platform for external sales and if it makes up a plurality of your sales they'll pull the plug.

you'll note humble bundle isn't literally the only sales those publishers make on those games, or even a majority of their sales, and it's also something that's specially blessed by valve. if you pull that as a random shit publisher not through humble bundle you'll get kicked off.

But you can sell steam keys with Valve taking a 0% cut.

See the 2 sibling comments 10 mins before you

> Consoles are not general purpose devices. But I wouldn't mind if EU went after them as

Silly argument. All of the consoles support apps.

How is a console not a general purpose device? If I gave you a PS5 dev kit, what software would you be unable to port?

It's mostly about intent: just about no one on the planet looks at the marketing for a PlayStation 5 and expects to be able to use it to file their taxes. That device is sold as a multimedia platform; that it happens to be a general purpose computer with software locks is irrelevant to it's stated purpose. The consumer is pretty well aware of what they're getting.

Not so with your average Apple device with access to the App Store, outside of maybe the TVs these days. The iPad ad that made all the headlines recently was clearly trying to bill it as a general purpose everything device with few if any such limitations. In terms of how the devices are marketed to consumers, it's night and day, and that does make a huge difference when trying to determine if consumers have been mislead by shady business practices.

> just about no one on the planet looks at the marketing for a PlayStation 5 and expects to be able to use it to file their taxes

Ah, this old chestnut of circular reasoning. It's not a general purpose computer because people think it isn't, so they don't use it as one because it's not a general purpose computer.

> The consumer is pretty well aware of what they're getting.

Is the consumer not well aware that iOS is a walled garden?

I should clarify that I don't personally hold this particular chestnut. A computer is a computer, and I'll remove the locks and run whatever software I please. I make homebrew games as a hobby, after all.

But regulators don't tend to write laws based on the actual tech, as much as how it gets used. That's the disconnect, but it still helps to try to understand the other point of view.

Sony hasn't marketed the PS5 as a general purpose computer, but they did that with the PS2 and 3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2

Economical viably? No software.

It's a platform for games.

With input devices targeted for games.

With an operational system target for games.

> It's a platform for games.

Primarily. Some can also play Blu-ray disks and all can stream music and movies from a bunch of different sources. The PS5 also has integrations with some social media sites and a built-in web browser. The PS5 Game Base application also lets you call and text other PS5 users.

> With input devices targeted for games.

But also bluetooth keyboard and mouse support.

> With an operational system target for games.

Did you have something specific in mind for this?

You're seriously asking me how is Playstation OS targeted at games?

Sorry I wont indulge in this level of discussion.

Waste of time for all involved.

> You're seriously asking me how is Playstation OS targeted at games?

We know the OS is great for games. What I'm asking is why it's not good for other things (the OS kernel is FreeBSD 11).

The PS2 and 3 had full user Linux support so those were obviously general purpose PCs. They removed Linux support for the PS4 and 5 though and apparently that seems to be enough for many people here to no longer think of them as computers.

If the dividing line between general purpose computer and appliance is in how the manufacturer lets you use it, then what functionality would the iPhone need to lose to in order for you to stop thinking the iPhone is a general purpose computer?

Everyone also conveniently forgets that in many cases, Apple is only charging 15%, not 30 (small business, long-term subscriptions, etc...)

You are conveniently forgetting that this was a direct response to the Epic Games lawsuit, as to not appear too anti competetive:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-lowers-app-store-tax-...

Apple only makes concessions when it is under legislative pressure.

15% can still be too much. Alternative music, book, etc stores often have high IP payments that make the business case impossible because 15% is more than the profit margin. And apple doesn't have that 15% for it's music and book store. It's the definition of monopoly privilege.

AFAIK, steam doesn't prevent developers from also allowing their games to be installed outside of steam (if so, then that's a problem).

It's the fact that there's no alternative to get spotify, etc onto your phone that's the ultimate issue. The security of the app store in an enourmous advantage, but they're using it to extract huge premiums.

Like it or not, our phones have become the primary medium we use for news, entertainment, etc. If it were me, I'd allow side-loading of apps onto the app store, but they'd then have zero access to your contacts, unique phone IDs, and strict privacy rules. Apple could still enforce malware via the apple subscription. Essentially, they can make it like MacOS, but not allow any unsigned apps.

> AFAIK, steam doesn't prevent developers from also allowing their games to be installed outside of steam (if so, then that's a problem).

Yep, that's something that's better worth focusing on than 30%.

Which is why DMA says nothing about 30%, and this complaint is largely about Apple forbidding steering.

Imagine if Steam were the only way to purchase games on your Windows PC.

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