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Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

news.patreon.com

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Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#561

Post by stahtops »

verisimi wrote: post #236

Apple are really such filth. Imagine thinking it's ok to take 30% of every transaction like this, and like they already do on their app store. I don't know how anyone thinks this is ok. It's worse than credit card rates.

Gotta be honest, I don't get the vitriol.

Patreon wants to advertise and publish content in an iOS app. Apple says you must allow in-app-purchases. Either there is value in being on the platform or there isn't. Patreon seems to think there is.

To creators there is no cost, by default the price of their subscription offerings will be bumped up so they get the same revenue. Patreon will also increase revenue by taking the same % of the higher overall price.

Users will have the choice of subscribing through iOS or through the website. If the higher cost from within the app isn't worth it to them, they will go to the website.

Who cares?

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#562

Post by frabcus »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #543
logifail wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to get into that quagmire I'm not sure it's a quagmire: iOS devices are more expensive compared with the competition. I don't think this is up for debate. Given that, a null hypothesis might be that since their owners are happy to pay more for their device that they have more disposible income?

I don't think it's up for debate either, but it doesn't change that a lot of people I've interacted with, online, at work and even at conferences don't like talking about the... differences in monetizing on the two major phone platforms.

Hmmm - it's been well known and talked about when I've worked for large B2C apps! In London.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#563

Post by lotsofpulp »

FireBeyond wrote: post #515
lotsofpulp wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without commenting on the appropriate level of charges, Visa and Apple provide very different services. For example, with Apple, you get administration of taxes in many locales as well as dealing with currency exchange. Also, I don't think sellers have to deal with chargebacks, although Apple might have their own version of a chargeback, but I am not sure.

> Also, I don't think sellers have to deal with chargebacks, although Apple might have their own version of a chargeback, but I am not sure. They absolutely do, just through Apple, "Disputes". Apple will refund the user the full purchase price (that's fun, $10 app, you get $7 after the Apple cut, and on refund, you have to refund $10, so you're actually out money). And too many disputes will get your developer privil…

That’s pretty shitty of Apple.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#564

Post by rchaud »

Bwass wrote: post #508
xelamonster wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, though the problem with this is that from my experience with Android, the web version of Patreon is practically unusable. Not that the app is much better, they seem determined to come up with the most horrific UX anyone could imagine across all platforms, but it at least can somewhat consistently handle playing the podcasts I subscribe to without cutting out every five minutes.

What do you mean, unusable? It's simple and straightforward.

It's slow with tons of loading spinners.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#565

Post by maximus-decimus »

danShumway wrote: post #554
Terretta wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was an open platform, then Apple couldn't charge any more than Steam which is on an open platform, because nobody would pay that much unless forced to. Wait, Steam charges more? Never mind.

If you're suggesting that Steam doesn't have an effective monopoly on the PC market, I have bad news for you. One of the biggest differences between Steam and Apple is that Steam does a better job of hiding the effects from users who will lash out at creators who talk about problems on the platform. An indie creator I follow recently implored fans to buy their next game on Steam and not other platforms... because in…

A huge difference is Steam doesn't come pre-installed on your computers nor does it block you from installing other game managers.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#566

Post by [deleted] »

bilbo0s wrote: post #170
bix6 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that insulting to the judge? If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market and exercise monopoly-like control. Especially considering all the colluding occurring.

* If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market* Not if your competitor, android, controls 70% of the market. That's what I meant about being insulting. In court, when we're making these kinds of claims, we shouldn't talk about what could be, we must talk about what is.

[deleted]

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#567

Post by makeitdouble »

trollied wrote: post #463
jprete wrote: post #10

I remember reading that per-creation billing is a very important feature for Patreon creators, because it removes the moral obligation to produce content just to justify a subscription. If Patreon really doesn't want to kill the feature itself, but is just responding to Apple's enforcement, then it seems like a really clear illustration of monopoly power - pushing unrelated markets to change their own structure and p…

The thing most aren’t thinking about is that per-creation billing is an absolute nightmare, and I don’t blame Apple for not supporting it. Can’t even begin to imagine the support nightmare/chargebacks etc. It’s not all about the 30% cut. If it was easy and trouble free, they would support it. Imagine what a great time apps would have if Apple let them charge you an amount whenever they wanted, without user authorisat…

> charge you an amount whenever they wanted, without user authorisation?

It's a simple matter of user communication: you make it clear from the start that the billing will be unpredictable, and potentially provide a ceiling for monthly bills to let the user stop if it goes out of hand.

I follow per creation billing creators and it's fine. Amazon also offers an option to auto buy new volumes of a series.

The customer not knowing in advance how much they'll be billed isn't common, but it's not complex in itself.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#568

Post by danpalmer »

danShumway wrote: post #134
cesarb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some creators on Patreon "pause" their monthly subscription when they have nothing to release on a given month, so that patrons won't be billed for that month. That could be a workaround for your use case.

Do we know whether or not iOS's subscription model supports pausing? I guess I assume Patreon would mention if it didn't.

It does not. Apple do all the billing. You have no mechanism to link up users and bills or change users billing. The only way would be to notify all subscribers to cancel their subscription, hope they do that, and then notify them all to resubscribe afterwards, which would obviously be catastrophic for subscription revenue, as well as a terrible user experience.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#569

Post by danShumway »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #552
danShumway wrote: post #389

Another point that Patreon isn't really emphasizing here that seems relevant to any conversations about "fairness" is that Apple's fees on Patreon subscriptions in-app are now higher than Patreon's fees. It's important to recognize any time that we're talking about the market that services charge what they can, not what is fair. The market does not have a concept of fairness, only competition. This is why there is no…

Let's take this to an extreme. Imagine an app that does little except thread together the basic UI components provided by iOS. In other words, something that most people here could write in an afternoon. Now imagine it ends up on the Apple marketplace. Given how much work goes into building iOS, the UX, and the app store, by your argument Apple should get 99.9% of the fees. The person who created the app just spent a…

> by your argument Apple should get 99.9% of the fees

No, by my argument, even if someone believes that Apple is somehow morally entitled to a specific level of compensation for running the app store, it is absurd to argue that the amount of work they're putting into making specifically the Patreon app available is higher than the amount of work that was put into building Patreon.

If you want to argue that they're not morally entitled to a certain percentage of revenue, great! Then let's talk unemotionally about antitrust, customer steering, and effective market competition without falling into the trap of worrying about whether or not Apple is getting "bullied" by that discussion.

The trap that people fall into so often when talking about Apple is trying to set this up like there's a hero and a villain, like people looking at the market are somehow trying to bully Apple out of something it justly deserves. But come on; when you see market effects like this it becomes so much more obvious that if there is any bully here, it's Apple.

"You can't reasonably expect Apple to-" Nah, this market outcome is bad. This is not the outcome that most of us want from an app store market. We should do things to make that market more competitive and to curb anti-competitive app-store policies.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#570

Post by [deleted] »

ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #477
danShumway wrote: post #389

Another point that Patreon isn't really emphasizing here that seems relevant to any conversations about "fairness" is that Apple's fees on Patreon subscriptions in-app are now higher than Patreon's fees. It's important to recognize any time that we're talking about the market that services charge what they can, not what is fair. The market does not have a concept of fairness, only competition. This is why there is no…

> Another point that Patreon isn't really emphasizing here that seems relevant to any conversations about "fairness" is that Apple's fees on Patreon subscriptions in-app are now higher than Patreon's fees. Unfortunately this is in the nature of suppliers and retailers. Supermarkets make more profit on a litre of milk than farmers. Way way way more. Because they know farmers in practice have to sell _all_ their milk,…

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