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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

#831

Post by The_Colonel »

troupo wrote: post #813
tebbers wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Patreon will need to become a reader app like Spotify/Kindle then that can do all this offline but you cannot subscribe or pay in the app.

The problem is that Patreon wouldn't even be able to tell people they can donate to their creators elsewhere due to Apple's assinine anti-steering provisions

This is honestly the main problem I have with that. You can argue that in-app purchase brings convenience etc. etc. and Apple deserves a cut and so on. But this enforced secrecy makes users unaware of the cost - they can't actually decide if the cut is worth the convenience or not. Apple relies on people not knowing the cost of the fees and that feels very dodgy.

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

#832

Post by Jensson »

rblatz wrote: post #748
heavyset_go wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet that isn't the case on Android, macOS, Windows, etc. This nightmare scenario only exists in your own mind and you're spooking yourself over it.

Windows store, steam, Xbox game pass, epic… That’s just off the top of my head, then you have the package mangers like WinGet and chocolatey.

Compare how many toxic practices there are in steam games with phone games and yeah, I massively prefer that over the app store monopoly.

App stores encourages shitty practices over healthy ecosystems, the model for computers has resulted in much better products with less consumer hostile practices.

Apple isn't an expert on games, they shouldn't decide what games to suggest and what games should be allowed on the phone, a dedicated game store would be a huge upgrade.

Edit: And no, phone games aren't consumer hostile because they are on phones, they are consumer hostile since the appstore encourages the games to be consumer hostile. You don't see many in-app purchases or ads in steam games since steam doesn't encourage those, while the appstore encourages it.

So you see phone games be shit because the appstore, do you really like phone games as they are or would you prefer them to be like steam? I don't think anyone prefers the phone game in-app purchase toxicity we have now.

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

#833

Post by throwaway290 »

egypturnash wrote: post #469
bkraz wrote: post #80

As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support, the news is terrible: Patreon informed me that all creators must switch to a monthly subscription schedule instead of the per-creation schedule that I and many other currently use. The whole point of per-creation is that it allows me to take time off, and only charge people when I release something, thus incentivizing me, and being fair to my suppo…

Oh you too. Glad to know I'm not the only one who's really liked per-creation for years. "I pay my rent if I can do eight posts of comics pages/art/etc a month" was a good kick in the ass to keep working. Patreon's been trying to kick everyone off of per-creation for like half the time I've been using it, so I'm sure they're pretty delighted to have this excuse to nuke that mode. I don't think I've seen a single Patr…

OG Patreon is monthly. The whole point is to support creator in tough times, not buy her stuff on discount.

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

#834

Post by grecy »

cortesoft wrote: post #650
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…

> 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'…

I’m a creator and have many supporters on patreon.

I didn’t know there is an app and I don’t care.

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

#835

Post by timmattison »

petre wrote: post #729
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? Apple & Google Pay is my guess. Which I don't use, just because it's rent seeking and leads to this. I use the websites. Don't want to install bloody apps which request every permission available. My browser has most of those set to denied. Don't even ask for permission, outright deny.

Apple Pay and Google Pay work with an existing card for normal (non-IAP) purchases. I don’t like rent seeking either but in this case it’s the standard CC payment flow. Nothing additional, just better security.

What makes a normal CC better?

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

#836

Post by ben_w »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #702
brigadier132 wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's possible to break them up without immense value destruction.

Breaking up standard oil famously created a lot more value.

Apparently that's still controversial (I learned just now while trying to learn more about the breakup). However, it was easy to see cut lines in Standard Oil.

Breaking up (and privatising) the UK national rail network didn't work so well; a few years after it happened, the party who did it lost power, and had apparently forgotten they had even done this to the trains as they were running ads saying "you paid the taxes so where are the trains".

Apple's iPhone can clearly be split into "hardware" and "software" because Android QED; but that's not sufficient because the Play Store gets much the same criticism.

Likewise the App Store can obviously be split off, the technical issues are demonstrated by what already exists. But, the Samsung store isn't stopping the criticism of the Play Store, so alt stores are also not enough here for iOS either.

I was expecting anti-trust issues before it reached "just" one trillion dollars of market cap, let alone three, so who knows.

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

#837

Post by kalleboo »

Hamuko wrote: post #5
throwaway98797 wrote: post #3

where’s the line between buying something on amazon, ordering a ride on uber, and patreon? why do some purchases get exempt and not others?

Whatever you get as a Patreon patron isn't typically a physical product, unlike something you buy on Amazon (generally speaking) or a physical car ride. It's closer to a Netflix or a newspaper subscription, and Apple wants 30% of those too.

Some Patreons I subscribe to do include stuff like postcards, signed posters or prints, so it's not quite as black and white

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

#838

Post by pyrale »

The article is filled with despicable stuff, but this one stands out:

> Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patreon’s subscription billing model. 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.

Apple needs to get the Standard Oil treatment.

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

#839

Post by espadrine »

pjerem wrote: post #787
Nekorosu wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. I didn't even know there was a Patreon app. There is an issue though. A lot of people (not me) use phone as their main computing device. And Apple is well known for keeping web app experience subpar compared to native app experience. Safari is lagging behind all the other browsers regarding modern APIs support. Bugs are not getting patched for years. At the same time other web rendering engines are not allowed o…

Heh, Safari may lack some APIs, but it’s irrelevant for 95% of apps including Patreon. It’s not like Patreon would be unusable on iOS without an app.

The problem is cultural: a growing population do not know what the Web is.

When they are asked to search for a website, they open the app store and search there. If there is no result, they give up.

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

#840

Post by throwaway290 »

danShumway wrote: post #616
danpalmer wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder why Patreon isn't hammering this point more if that's the case. This seems to me to be an almost bigger problem than the loss of the per-creation billing. Not that losing per-creation billing is good, but Patreon has been threatening it for a while, and there are ways it could in theory be simulated. But this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... with…

> this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... without continuing to charge patrons.

"I will want to withhold money the moment you go on a break" is not "patronage".

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