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Comment by dartharva | Hacker News Reader

In the same article:

    3.1.1 In-App Purchase:
    If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency wallets, etc.

Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshit

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You’ll have to excuse me for not mourning for game developers having to pay 30% for purchases of loot boxes and other pay to win mechanics.

It came out in the original Epic trial that this is where 90% of in app revenue comes from.

What about the freemium model that is standard in the industry? Not everything is games.

You mean the model that has shifted to where apps that used to be a single $10 unlock, now have a recurring subscription of $24.99/month?

Personally unclear how much less predatory the shift to subscriptions for trivial feature unlocks is than loot boxes...

What app used to be $10 and is now a $300/year subscription?

Try to keep Tetris ad free. 6.99 a month, and they label that as a "special deal".

And the original official Tetris game was $0.99 ad free one time purchase as was classic Angry Birds

I bought GoodNotes 5 and love it. One time purchase, and a great little app. Now GoodNotes 6 is out. Their “most popular plan” is an annual subscription. I just tried to look up how expensive it is - but their pricing page[1] lists a bunch of different plans available. It doesn’t list the actual prices. (Why on earth does a notes app have multiple usage plans? Horrible.)

They have a “one time payment” option. But I thought that’s what I already bought from the App Store when I bought it a couple years ago. I guess not. My totally fine, currently working version (v5) will probably randomly stop working at some point in the future and I’ll lose all my notes, because I suppose breaking totally working software is good business.

Wtf.

https://www.goodnotes.com/pricing

That pricing page is absolutely abysmal and indefensible, but has nothing to do with what the parent comment said (small one time purchase vs larger recurring subscription). There's a one time payment option (with no price, which is shitty) on that page for v6. That seems like it has exactly the functionality you wanted?

> They have a “one time payment” option. But I thought that’s what I already bought from the App Store when I bought it a couple years ago.

You said yourself you bought GoodNotes 5, and this is for GoodNotes 6.

There's thousands of games targeted at children that are exactly this.

There are publishers that drop reskin after reskin of the same game all with individual subscriptions, and they constantly try to kids from one into the other.

Then others clone that game and do the same thing. Fluvsies is an App Store virus.

And nobody is going to drop their prices because of the ruling.

This may be great for some publishers, but doesn’t benefit the consumer in any way. In fact as i consumer id much rather deal with Apple’s payment system than a separate payment mechanism for each app, especially when it comes to cancelling, changes etc

If you’re an Indy developer making less than 1 million a year, you are paying 15%. Is it really not worth 15% (where if your product has value you should be able to charge enough to make up the difference) for credit card processing (3%-4%) and distribution?

I think the issue is not about what it's worth, but what they should be allowed to charge for. To me, the argument about "what it's worth" is fundamentally wrong.

As an extreme example, if some company found a way to charge me $100 every day or my head would explode, that obviously is worth $100 to most of us. However, I'm currently not having to pay any company to prevent my head from exploding, so maybe that's just not something I should have to pay for.

Name one platform or even retail physical goods store that has less than a 15% markup from the wholesale price?

Why is a middleman required at all? Epic seems happy to process their own payments - they don't need a "platform" to do it for them.

Epic tried side loading on Android and not use Google Play. That ended up being a horrible financial disaster and a security nightmare. https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/mobile-security/fornite-android...

As I said, my point is just that it's not something I should be obligated to pay for.

But, if you're looking for counterexamples to show it can be done for less than a 15% cut, they're around. Almost every eBay category charges less than 15%, for example. And, as another user pointed out, Epic takes less than 15%. AliExpress charges 5-8% on average. Etsy is I think something like 6.5%.

Etsy charges 6.5% transaction fee + 3% payment processing fee + a flat $0.25 fee per transaction. That would end up being more than 15% for most Apple purchases of $1-$3.

eBay charges a final value fee of 12.9% and $.30 - $0.40 flat fee per order. And you pay a fee for international orders.

I would say no. Especially since App Store search sucks and you have to pay (again) to show up as a top result for your own app's name.

Contrast this with Steam, where search is better and the top result is not your competitor squatting your product name.

Yeah, it's mobile, so it's not all games with loot boxes and escalating pay to play. Some of it is infinite slop addictionware, brain rot, gambling, payday loan apps, shovelware, and spyware.

Apple sucks for their monopoly tactics, but it's very hard for me to have any sympathy for the rest of the mobile ecosystem. It's probably the most exploitative toxic software ecosystem.

It is everyone, not just loot boxes. Apple could put an end to lootboxes if they wanted to.

I get where Apple is coming from, though, and it's not just the revenue stream. They want to make sure that if you spent money on something in the Apple ecosystem, you can enjoy that for as long as you got a working device with that app installed. Allowing third-party services like license keys introduce a dependency on the vendor to keep their servers up and running.

.. well, apart from Apple's own ability to vaporize apps from the store at no notice, and their own upgrade treadmill which tends to cause low-revenue apps to be dropped. No, it's just because someone other than Apple is earning money, and this will probably also end up being overturned.

Apple wants to make sure they get a 30% cut if you spend money on anything within their ecosystem — that's all they really care about.

There are several reports of people having their entire accounts banned, effectively losing access to everything they paid for. And it's basically impossible to get your account back.

.. wait, so what exactly is allowed for "steering" to your own website, if not subscriptions or content?

> Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshit

You're confusing developers with publishers. Developers love this shit, one simple API that's built in to the OS and you can support payments worldwide instead of having to integrate with dozens of payment providers all with their own quirky APIs.

Now for publishers, who want to maximise their profit margins and who don't have to actually write the code to do all those integrations, that's a different story. But I don't think there is a single developer in the world who enjoys integrating with 3rd party payment services.

Hard disagree. Developers are often forced to integrate with both IAP and backend workarounds, which creates more effort and edge cases.

Maybe you meant to specify a specific subset of iOS-only developers?

> Now for publishers,

As if there are no developers who are also publishers.

If you're an indie developer who self-publishes, do you want to spend your time working on your app or on payment platform integrations?

Especially the smaller self-publishing developers won't benefit from this at all. It's just the large publishers like Epic who can afford the developer resources to build their own payment systems who have something to gain here.

Apple’s rules leveled the playing field. All this ruling does is give a competitive advantage to the big fish.

> If you're an indie developer who self-publishes, do you want to spend your time working on your app or on payment platform integrations?

Integrating with Stripe is easy. Or with Mollie. Or with...

> Especially the smaller self-publishing developers won't benefit from this at all.

Indeed. No one will benefit from not paying 30% of revenue to Apple.

> Developers love this shit

Somebody needs to alert the developers, because they're currently unaware of how much they love it. I've only ever seen devs complain about this stuff.

Of course, this is a self-selected group because people who are happy with the status quo don't usually talk about it loudly online. Still, many developers, including iOS-only indies, are unhappy with the App Store's payment constraints. Check out mjtsai's blog for regular roundups of their complaints.

Apple's API is atrocious to work with, especially integrating it with a server to handle payment success/failure. It's annoyingly naive and kind of the API equivalent of "you're holding it wrong".

Developers love paying 30% to a single middleman?

Why not? I'd personally never go somewhere else to pay for your subscription or content. Maybe if you were a big time player that didn't have an appealing alternative, like Netflix. But for the average app, like Planta or Breethe, I'm just switching to an app that has an in app purchase if yours doesn't.

Semi-related, but I also always pick an app that has family sharing of subscription over one that doesn't too (Headspace --> Breethe)

The wording here seems, to me, to have some silly limitations. For example, there are apps I have thought would make a nice gift for a friend before, and the easiest way to do this is to buy an unlock key and send it to them.

But, with these rules, I guess the goal is that I have to send them a gift card instead? I'll just not bother and get them something else.

Probably.

Though you could make the argument that it would be more complex than it's worth. There's regional issues, like can I redeem your gift code from cdkeys.ru in the US. Can I return the app afterward if I don't want it for a 160 rubles credit? They might already need to handle that stuff for gift cards though.

Apple has an integrated “gift this app” function in their app store. I’m not sure you can use it for in-app purchases, however.

That makes no sense, using Paypal or Stripe is very normal on the web. There is no reason why it should be any different in apps except for Apple trying to gaslight us.

My personal opinion makes no sense? I don't really care if an app only has subscriptions or purchases through their website, I'm just saying that I wouldn't use it when there's an easier and more convenient alternative available.

Adopting the language of the abused to describe being inconvenienced by the company that makes your phone is uhh, something.

> I'd personally never go somewhere else to pay for your subscription or content.

When "going elsewhere" means "getting stuff cheaper", people are likely going to go elsewhere to pay for any subscription even if setup is notably less convenient.

Depends how much cheaper.

If my Shonen Jump subscription goes from $2 to $1.70, I'd rather pay the 30 cents than have to click and type for 2 minutes, and then have to solve a mystery to cancel it later.

If my ChatGPT Pro (hypothetical, I don't pay for that) went from $200 to $170, maybe worth it.

why not let everyone decide for themselves if they want to pay the extra to do the purchase in app?

Explain to me where I made the argument that they shouldn't?

Your first comment where you said "Why not?" to a comment questioning the clause that apps are required to use in-app purchases would be read as supporting Apple's restrictions, i.e. no user choice.

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