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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#111

Post by mewse »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #46
Aissen wrote: post #15

Weird how this is the exact opposite of Valve's strategy: > For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...

You don't need to distribute on Steam. While it can bring legitimacy to an indie, alternatives exist. Not so with the App Store. Steam wants to disincentivize big companies making their own distribution, which is why they have the regressive split.

> You don't need to distribute on Steam. [...] alternatives exist.

Sure, if you want your business to go bankrupt.

Itch? I love the place but good luck supporting your business with the number of sales you’ll make if you’re only available there. Epic? GoG? Humble? Those are curated stores; you have to be invited in; you can’t just choose to sell there. And even if you could, they still don’t have anything even remotely remotely remotely like the number of shoppers on Steam.

As a practical matter, today, Steam is the only realistic option for mainstream non-hobbyist digital PC game publishing. You can do other stores plus Steam, but Steam has to be in the mix if you’re hoping to support yourself by your sales. (and yes, you can point to a small handful of digital games which were highly financially successful without primarily selling through Steam, but those are the hyper-viral one-in-a-million exceptions, not representative business cases that you should be betting your business on replicating)

(Exception: if one of the other stores is going to pay you to be exclusive to their store (preferably only for a certain duration so that you can get onto Steam right after that period), then that can absolutely make up for losing out on the early Steam sales. But again, that sort of deal isn’t available to everybody)

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#112

Post by saagarjha »

Closi wrote: post #51
jamil7 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be a problem in practise since the rules aren't fairly or consistently enforced. Look to recent issues with iSH being approved and rejected. Edit: as others have pointed out iSH isn't the best example of this.

iSH is definitely in the “pushing the boundaries of the rules” area of apps (x86 emulation) and probably shouldn’t have been allowed if you took a strict interpretation of the rules. OP is just saying 99% of apps being developed are clearly within the rules, rather than really pushing against the boundaries of what is allowed.

Well, that is the crux of the matter: the rules are not written correctly because they allow iSH to be inconsistently judged if you take "a strict interpretation"; there should not be a strict interpretation; it should just be "this app is reasonable" and "this app is not" and not "hey this looks like it's running code…does that make it a security risk?" which reviewers are not equipped to answer.

When we made the appeal for iSH we correctly surmised that the point of the rule that was cited was to prevent apps from bypassing App Store review, which iSH does not do in the slightest. Taken from the real perspective from which the app should have been judged, iSH is not at the boundary at all; instead it's the apps that do things like undisclosed A/B testing and feature flags to hide things from review. So what happens is developers like us who are actually clearly within the rules as they are meant to be applied get caught in limbo at the whim of reviewers who misunderstand the guidelines because they aren't written as they are supposed to be enforced.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#113

Post by ChrisRR »

andysinclair wrote: post #55
gtsteve wrote: post #21

Looks nice but it doesn't solve my fundamental problem: 1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app 2. Apple rejects it -or- 2. Apple approves it 3. I ship a new update 4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively. I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can…

This is not aimed at solving your problem, this is aimed at helping us small developers build a more sustainable business on the App Store. We will ultimately build more apps and invest more time in supporting and improving our current apps.

That was obviously the point of their comment. It doesn't matter what percentage apple take when they're still heavy handed about their apps and won't tell you why an app was rejected

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#114

Post by adanto6840 »

user-the-name wrote: post #24
gtsteve wrote: post #21

Looks nice but it doesn't solve my fundamental problem: 1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app 2. Apple rejects it -or- 2. Apple approves it 3. I ship a new update 4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively. I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can…

This really isn't a problem in practice, unless you are going out of your way to try to bend the rules set in place, especially about sales.

I recently was in contact with someone who has written a menu-bar app to monitor Tesla Powerwall status. It's in the Mac App Store already -- but NOT the latest version, because Apple suddenly decided that they wanted written proof that accessing the Powerwall APIs was allowed (from whom?! It's MY hardware!). Apple will not allow the dev to update his Mac App in the MAS; yet they approved & continue to leave the original older version [with known bugs] up, available for purchase.

So now the developer is stuck -- he can't update his app on the Mac App Store, and what recourse does he have as a 1-man-shop vs Apple?! =|

As a developer I find it absurd, as a consumer [who bought the app on MAS and wondered why I had the non-latest version], I find it absolutely baffling & anti-consumer.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#116

Post by ChrisRR »

karolkozub wrote: post #47

Wow. That's amazing. That's a 20% increase in revenue for those eligible. I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue. If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax. 999k --[-15%]--> 849k 1000…

I suspect it may be to do with the Epic legal issues, and they're trying to appear less money grabbing

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#117

Post by jclardy »

karolkozub wrote: post #47

Wow. That's amazing. That's a 20% increase in revenue for those eligible. I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue. If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax. 999k --[-15%]--> 849k 1000…

You are almost correct - it goes by the prior years income, but based on the 30% cut. Meaning if you sold 1m in products you would still be in the 15% bracket next year. You would need ~1.43m in sales to be "Moved up" the next year (It gets more complicated with subscription revenue already having a 30/15 cut depending on the user's subscription length.) It works out to this (Using 1m in sales as the cutoff to simplify the numbers):

Year 1: 999k --[-15%]--> 849k (This year doesn't trip the "limit"

Year 2: 1000k --[-15%]-->850k (Limit is tripped, next year is 30%)

Year 3: 999k --[-30%]-->699k (Fell below the limit, next year is 15% again)

Basically if you are close to the limit at the end of the year, you should immediately stop all advertising/marketing spend to ensure you don't go over the peak :)

I'm not really sure why they did it this way as it really screws over people that are just at the 1m/yr mark, vs a progressive system that would "just work."

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#118

Post by timjver »

Zobat wrote: post #98
konschubert wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Apple should have handled this like tax brackets: The first million gets taxed 15% and anything beyond that gets taxed 30%. I wonder why they're not doing that and creating all kinds of weird edge cases that will encourage hacky workarounds. I guess they didn't want to lose out on the first million from those who are above the first bracket.

From the annoncement: "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year."

Right, but will they be eligible the year after? If not, then this still means that not surpassing the threshold could increase their revenue in the long run.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#119

Post by saagarjha »

jamil7 wrote: post #79
spijdar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree the rules are often inconsistently enforced, and I'm a fan of iSH, I think the real surprise is it was ever approved in the first place, as it seems to clearly be violating the "spirit of the law" regarding Apple being pretty clear they don't want apps that allow arbitrary binary execution. iSH tried to circumvent this with a technicality, and it seems to have initially "worked", but I think it's a poor…

OK fair enough perhaps it wasn't the most cut and dry example. But it was the most recent I could think of.

I think the fact that the guidelines are written as such to make people think it wasn't a cut and dry example is really what makes it better example than you might have even though it was at the beginning. The rule Apple would like to enforce is very clear, and we know what it was and the review team didn't, because the guidelines didn't reflect the rule that Apple wanted to enforce (and thus ended up enforcing it inconsistently). A situation where developers have to tell the review team how the guidelines work because they're not written down explicitly is a very untenable position and one that needs to change.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#120

Post by jclardy »

gzimhelshani wrote: post #94
madeofpalk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except then the next year you get kicked out of the program and back to 30% on every dollar?

No, you start by 15% default until you reach the $1m threshold. After that you pay 30% for the remainder of that year. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

That is correct, but then the next year you start at 30%. So if you make slightly less next year you will end up earning less money that year since it is all at the 30% cut (And then the following year will fall back down to 15%)
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