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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

#791

Post by dwaite »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #619
highwaylights wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree in principle, the counter-argument to this is that Apple would ultimately be blamed in the minds of consumers for not keeping those devices protected from bad software. They could say I told you so, but that doesn’t help them after the golden goose of the App Store has already been cooked.

>the counter-argument to this is that Apple would ultimately be blamed in the minds of consumers for not keeping those devices protected from bad software. To be brash, maybe consumers need to learn how to protect themselves or move to dumb hardware that is impractical to hack. I don't understand this trend of blaming corporations for not being the de facto gatekeeper of security. They should help minimize spam/malwa…

As a technically minded person, I must say I don’t know how to protect myself from secretly malicious apps.

A weather app needs my location and network access. It doesn’t need to sell ongoing location tracking information associated with my device identifier and IP addresses to marketing companies.

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

#792

Post by fragmede »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #733
soulofmischief wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also an issue of onboarding and discoverability. Creators would see a marked reduction in subscriptions if Patreon was not allowed placement in the app store.

Why? What makes the app itself so attractive? Do Apple users not know what Safari is, or how to type in a link? And it should be noted most Patreon users find their way there via YouTube, which itself automatically opens links to Safari, where Patreon can be subscribed to easily.

It's about friction. you could give users a PO box address and ask users to get out an envelope and write a check, and say if users really wanted to pay they'd do that. But we all know you're gonna lose out on a ton of money if you make it that hard for people to give you money. So it's about how much friction there is, and for some, an app is preferable to some website where I have to wade through a bunch of crap. Depending on what it is, if it bounces me to Safari, I might just get distracted and "just do it later" aka never.

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

#793

Post by lomase »

mcguire wrote: post #391
pwdiscflatmajor wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FL Studio (fka FruityLoops) is an outstanding exponent of this old method (but once, free upgrades for life)

Free upgrades are problematic themselves: once you've saturated your market (a good place to be, right?) you no longer have income to provide upgrades.

FL Studio has had free updates for +23 years and is a company with profit.

It does not look like a problem for them.

Do you have an example of a company that saturated the market with free upgrades and went down because of it?

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

#794

Post by dwaite »

Terretta wrote: post #601
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "nobody" is doing all the work. Steam distributes to Windows, but you aren't required to use Steam to distribute to Windows, and then many people don't . Adobe isn't paying Valve to distribute their suite. Epic doesn't use it for Fortnite. Random enterprise software developers have nothing to do with it. It's like pointing to the existence of people who willingly buy a BMW as a justification for forcing everyone…

Adobe isn't paying Apple either. You buy Adobe from Adobe, "Get" Adobe from Apple, and log in with an email. Also, a minority of consumers by headcount choose Apple. A majority of wallet share is spent by those who do choose it. That's behind most of the sour grapes.

Adobe absolutely supports in-app purchasing for Creative Cloud. So does Microsoft with O365.

These conversations often seem to miss that Apple’s requirement is that consumer purchasing be presented as the singular option in-app, not that you have to pay Apple a cut for purchases outside the App.

Even Amazon Video supports in-app purchasing of a Prime account restricted to Prime Video access. They just know next to nobody is going to use it vs an actual Prime account.

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

#795

Post by mrweasel »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #666
cortesoft wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does? Well, there is a simple way to test this... just get rid of the Patreon iOS app and just use a web version. Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based? I wish fewer companies had apps. I don't need an app for everything. I don'…

> Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based? because apple gimps their web browser capabilities & performance to incentivize developers to enter the walled garden

That bullshit to be honest. Not the lack of features in Safari, that's very real, but you don't need most of it. There is nothing that Patreon needs to do that could not be done by a 15 year old browser, let alone the newest version of Safari on iOS.

I can understand that developers would like to use certain feature, or that they'd make the job easier, but they are not required. Patreon isn't cutting edge web development, you could make it work on an IE8 if you cared enough. There it absolutely no features currently lacking in Safari that would prevent Patreon in moving to website only.

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

#796

Post by johnnyanmac »

brookst wrote: post #652
johnnyanmac wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is it possible for a second-tier distributor to bring more value to a first-tier distributor than the first-tier brings to suppliers? In the sense that [bigger company] can make more money and reach more people than [smaller company], yes. But if all they are doing is sitting there and using that bigger presence, you can see how that roads ends in antitrust. >The economics would suggest that Patreon should do away w…

> In the sense that [bigger company] can make more money and reach more people than [smaller company], yes. But if all they are doing is sitting there and using that bigger presence, you can see how that roads ends in antitrust. I don't follow this at all. If a big record label strikes an international distribution deal with a small label, the big label brings more value to the artist than the small label does. Is th…

>If a big record label strikes an international distribution deal with a small label, the big label brings more value to the artist than the small label does. Is that necessarily antitrust?

it ultimately comes down to what they are doing with that money in my eyes. Are they actually distributing as a presence inernationally, helping you gather talent, helping you to navigate the industry outside your area, introducing contacts and deals to you, and overall being pivotal to your small label? Sure, they get a bigger cut. They are actively growing you as a company.

Or are they saying "yeah I'll put you on our Spotify", pay you 10% of ad revenue, claiming exclusivity on your portfolio, and calling it a day? No, there's no value there that couldn't be done yourself. But you're paying for the "platform" they have. That is very much using their presence to exploit you. The key isn't necessarily "are they a monopoly" here, it's "are they abusing their position as a monopoly".

>Though it's hard for me to fault "forcing" devs to own the hardware they are developing for.

It's a tech specific sitution, but the main point wasn't the target platform, but development platforms. I can setup a Linux server rack with android emulators and use my Windows device to develop and deploy to said rack. I am forced to use mac as a development platform and they disconinued Mac's server OS. So I can't even scale up a test suite for IOS, I need to buy multiple iPhones or beefy desktop Macs to run a few emulators each.

>iOS software have enough quality issues without letting developers ship stuff that has never been tested on real HW.

great use of my subscription fee to maintain crappy emulators. They don't even have platform excuses like Android does.

Again, what am I really paying for here?

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

#797

Post by mcintyre1994 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #361
dannyobrien wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why Patreon has to drop the per-creation model. Can they not just not offer that on iOS, and continue it on other platforms? (Perhaps with a "convert from susbcription to per-creation" feature online?)

From the article: > Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store. In other words, every Patreon creator has to be billable through iOS App Store or you get kicked off. Someone should get the FTC or EU involved. This is beyond the pale.

I wonder if you could argue this is comparable to Amazon allowing you to buy some things in the app but not others, like ebooks. Obviously Amazon is much bigger but I don’t see why an app shouldn’t be able to allow buying some things but not others. Especially when the limitation is from Apple’s functionality like in this case, rather than their fee like in Amazon’s.

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

#798

Post by troad »

soulofmischief wrote: post #689
cortesoft wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does? Well, there is a simple way to test this... just get rid of the Patreon iOS app and just use a web version. Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based? I wish fewer companies had apps. I don't need an app for everything. I don'…

It's also an issue of onboarding and discoverability. Creators would see a marked reduction in subscriptions if Patreon was not allowed placement in the app store.

I honestly don't think this is true. I think people tend to discover a creator they like first, and then click through to their Patreon. I don't think the reverse happens very often; I don't think many people install the Patreon app so that they can look through lists of people they could give money to. And if they do, they're clearly aware enough of Patreon to be able to use the website instead.

Assuming the average user accesses Pateron by clicking a link, there's really no reason for a dedicated Patreon app to exist. Apple Pay works just fine on websites, without demanding the App Store fee.

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

#799

Post by dwaite »

danShumway wrote: post #684
tshaddox wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does? For people who would never give Patreon money by going to Patreon’s website? Sure, why not? That sounds like a niche market that Patreon would be completely unable to participate in without Apple’s help.

Sounds like a fun experiment. I'd be interested in Apple allowing Patreon to test that theory by disabling purchases within the app. Is this really about access to a niche user group of users who would never sign up elsewhere? Apple seems to be very invested in forcing Patreon to either not be in the app store at all (and given the limitations of web apps, this is a significant penalty), or offer exclusively Apple pa…

> Apple seems to be very invested in forcing Patreon to either not be in the app store at all

Does it? It seems like they are enforcing their developer agreement as written, and likely have been advised they need to enforce it uniformly due to regulatory scrutiny. I believe Google hit this in India where it was ruled they could not start collecting their royalty after several years of non-enforcement across certain categories as it amounted to a bait-and-switch.

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

#800

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #701
ecjhdnc2025 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Often milk is a 'loss leader' for supermarkets. They put it as far away from the entrance as possible so you have to walk through the whole store.

Milk is not a loss leader: they aren’t losing money on it to get you to spend elsewhere.

It’s profitable for supermarkets.

(They definitely do manipulate milk prices to get consumers to shop with them rather than competitors, and sometimes they artificially lower the prices. But they don’t ever do this at their own expense. They do it by forcing farmers to supply below the true cost of production. Because dairy farmers can’t just sell some of their milk. Essentially as soon as a dairy farmer can’t get a buyer for the totality of their product they are out of business. It’s remarkably precarious. So most are pressured into selling below cost for long periods of time.)

Supermarkets might be using it to get customers deeper into the store but milk is also heavy, awkward, refrigerated, and shorter shelf life, which means they are always going to put it closest to the back of the store.

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