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Comment by willtemperley | Hacker News Reader

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What is absurd is finding yourself paying 30% on every digital item purchased on a smartphone app. It would never even occur to us that Microsoft takes a 30% margin on Steam, yet that is what happens on webtoon apps.

Microsoft threatened to take 30% margin on all Steam transactions. That's why Valve embraced Linux and made the Steam Deck and Steam Machine.

Valve already takes a 30% cut of all Steam transactions. It's just corporations fighting to steal each other's revenue streams.

> Microsoft threatened to take 30% margin on all Steam transactions. That's why Valve embraced Linux and made the Steam Deck and Steam Machine.

This is totally made up.

Let me clarify. Microsoft did not approach Valve and say "give us 30% or else." Valve saw that Microsoft was moving in the same direction of Apple where their devices would be locked down and only run software from their store, felt threatened, and decided they couldn't remain tied to that ecosystem.

Microsoft don't really have an equivalent to iOS so let's compare oranges to oranges: macOS vs Windows.

On macOS, Apple don't take a 30% cut on Steam purchases. Steam take 30% however.

There's a big difference - when you develop an app for iOS or macOS, using Apple's APIs, platform and app store tech, it's reasonable to pay Apple something and they legally can charge.

I don't actually have an opinion on whether 30% or 15% is too much or not. It's factually wrong or illogical arguments that bother me: how can we fight anything when the arguments are just nonsensical.

Apple make plenty of user-hostile decisions, but people need to criticise them reasonably, otherwise they will be ignored by those that might have the influence to change things for the better.

> when you develop an app for iOS or macOS, using Apple's APIs, platform and app store tech, it's reasonable to pay Apple something

Is it?

We spent several decades of the PC world, MSDOS and Windows, with zero platform license fees or approvals. This was hugely beneficial for innovation, and this is why everyone hates the sudden rise of platform landlordism.

You're perfectly entitled to distribute a macOS app with your own paywall, the same as ever. Nothing has changed from that perspective.

Rent-seeking on SaaS platforms is far worse I think, e.g. $30 per month for 10GB of data in a recent offering I was looking at, and who knows where the data are. Some datacenter in a foreign land with a mad king probably.

> You're perfectly entitled to distribute a macOS app with your own paywall

Are you sure the ToS allows that? Given the "anti-steering" rules? Can you point me to an example that isn't by a megacorp?

> $30 per month for 10GB of data in a recent offering I was looking at, and who knows where the data are

That's worse pricing than my mobile contract!

Scroll to the bottom:

https://developer.apple.com/macos/distribution/

Isn't the "outside the app store" bit entirely new, and forced on them by the EU?

Doesn't change that if you distribute inside the app store, the app store rules ban you from any kind of external payment system.

> Isn't the "outside the app store" bit entirely new, and forced on them by the EU?

No it's always been like this.

> Doesn't change that if you distribute inside the app store, the app store rules ban you from any kind of external payment system.

Yes because you're paying for the payment system amongst other things.

Remember when software was sold in a box with a paper manual in a store? Before App Store and steam, retailers and publishers of games and software also took their share of the revenue from the work software developers created. Their cut wasn’t small.

If the government stepped in to regulate the sales of software (to protect developers and consumers?) do you think: A) apps will cost less B) the government won’t want their cut

Yeah but there was a big difference: As a developer you could opt out of that distribution and go your own way. I knew people who sold floppies out of their garage. IBM or whoever made your hardware, and Microsoft or whoever made your OS, could not prevent your users from installing your software on their machine.

Gov't taking a cut from tha App store is already happening [1] and it's a legitimate concern unlike the concept of Apple taking cuts from people's salary (LOL).

[1] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/12/app-store-and-japanese-co...

So they aren't exempt from sales tax in Japan, and they're crying about it?

Can't they add a rent clause to the ToS of MacOS, claiming that any commercial use (work for money) requires commercial licence?

Can Bic add a ToS to using their biros, so 15% of contract value goes to them if it's signed with their pen?

It would likely get voided as unconscionable if they just unilaterally demanded it, but it might hold up in specific circumstances (if the user is well-aware of the salary demand when they accepted the contract, and the user gets some proportionate value out of giving Apple a percentage of salary).

This is based on the controversial Unreal licensing, which is percent of revenue: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license

It’s reductio ad absurdum to make a point. But you could argue that income from Patreon forms part/all of a creator’s salary.

I don’t agree that this is an Apple hating thread. Its commentary on a pretty despicable action that Apple is taking.

“Despicable” is by an order of magnitude softer word compared to “Apple can legally take your salary”

Sure, Apple is greedy. But it doesn’t deserve what is usually assumed: legal persecution.

> It’s reductio ad absurdum

It's not, it's just factually wrong.

If Apple can legally claim 30% of your salary then a doctor using an iPad to demonstrate results of a scan to a patient has to pay Apple 30% of their consultation fee.

That's reductio ad absurdum.

Lol.

> If Apple can legally claim 30% of your salary then a doctor using an iPad to demonstrate results of a scan to a patient has to pay Apple 30% of their consultation fee.

Apple could absolutely do this. They could say that professional medical use of macOS requires a commercial license, and the price of that commercial licence could be linked to revenue.

Doctors - or rather their hospital IT/procurement departments - would be held to the terms of service they agree to. Far more rigorously than ordinary consumers.

If that were legally enforcable, which is almost certainly not the case, Microsoft and Google could do the same, making your argument moot in this context.

Every software company can do this. Oracle Java is free for personal use but if you use it in prod you have to pay a licence based on the number of employees in your company. Epic games takes 5% of your revenue above a million if you use unreal for a game. Docker desktop requires a paid license if you have over 250 employees or $10 million in revenue.

Let's continue with the reductio ad absurdum - a taxi driver uses their iPhone to navigate. Can Apple take 30% of their revenue?

Absolutely, if the taxi driver signs a contract / agrees to terms of service. What law prohibits them from charging that? This is why open source is so important.

Heard of the word "contract"?

What would make this legally unenforceable?

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