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Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

developer.apple.com

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Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#221

Post by m-s-y »

999900000999 wrote: post #162

Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP. When I use mobile apps I like being able to do all my spending in one place. I want to be able to go to subscriptions and cancel everything I don't need at once. Just yesterday I had to manually stop a PayPal payment renewal since the merchants cancellation process doesn't work ( 2 emails to customer service and I get the…

> Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP.

and this is apple’s reasoning for why their strict control over the app store is warranted. they want it to be seen as trusted and infallible and that can’t happen if 3rd parties have free reign.

for me, the correct way forward isn’t external referrals. it’s allowing multiple app stores on devices. if you don't want the “untrusted” 3rd party store with more lax dev rules than Apple’s, just don’t use them.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#222

Post by amluto »

post_break wrote: post #146

This is what bad management at Apple looks like. They were now forced to cut off the spice flow that is millions of dollars of IAPs from games in their coveted services pie chart because they got cocky. Roblox alone is going to show up on their balance chart. Epic throwing water on an oil fire with their comments make me grin, they are the reason Apple lowered AppStore pricing, and now they are the reason Apple can n…

Maybe? Apple collected a lot of money in the last year doing this.

I wonder if someone will try to force them to refund it all.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#223

Post by nottorp »

jjice wrote: post #102
fundatus wrote: post #3

Sigh, not that I expected anything else from Apple at this point but of course they only change the rules for the US.

It seems pretty standard for tech companies. They did the same thing with EU only side-loading (not even sure if that's the right term for how restricted it is). They'll only make changes where they need to, whether it's the EU or the US, or even the UK (let's see how that encryption stuff turns out). As a business, I understand why they would - more revenue. At least there's some progress and I wouldn't be surprised…

> EU only side-loading

There is no side loading on iOS, even for the EU.

Not by my definition of side loading.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#224

Post by cloudfudge »

ohgr wrote: post #192
EcommerceFlow wrote: post #167

If you haven't watched Tim Sweeney's appearance on Lex Fridman (which went live two days ago ironically), he discusses this battle against Apple, which he's maintained at a furious pace for years. He goes into detail on how the previous guidelines stifle innovation, how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.…

Fortnite - sit in lobby for 80% of the time and buy shit? Tim just wants all of his cut. And wants Apple to pay his app distribution costs... There's no good guys anywhere in this.

"App distribution costs" is laughable as an incentive. Any business that makes an app where you can and will spend dollars would gladly let you download it directly from their website in exchange for not giving up 30% of the in-app payments. App distribution costs nothing.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#225

Post by ladon86 »

gruez wrote: post #191
macguillicuddy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally? Lots of these arguments could equally be applied to a shopping mall but we don't require all stores within a mall to use the same merchant services provider.

>Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally? The credit card system is far less generous than App Store's policies. Apple offers no-questions asked refunds. Credit cards don't.

They don’t always grant refunds for App Store purchases, I’ve heard from many customers whose refund requests were denied after we referred them to Apple. As a developer I would love to be able to refund them myself, but we can’t refund IAPs at all, it’s entirely up to Apple.

If the customer requests too many refunds (say 3-4 within a few months) their Apple ID is likely to be banned from making further purchases.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#226

Post by BobaFloutist »

ncr100 wrote: post #199
zackify wrote: post #112

Crazy. I thought hackernews didn’t care because this happened yesterday and I never saw anything! We’re updating our app in a couple days this will save a LOT of money. We will kick users out to web and pass a JWT in the url with a short lifespan to log the user in on web and then prompt for Apple Pay or credit card. Then a link back to our app’s deep link

Would be interested to hear the magnitude estimate of savings.

Presumably somewhere between 30% and 0%. Let's call it...20%?

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#227

Post by dfxm12 »

jmward01 wrote: post #194
stavros wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let "better" be the enemy of "good".

I often say you have to judge people based on their time and the environment around them and you need to encourage whatever good moves you see. In other words, I'll take a greedy bloodsucker over an evil greedy bloodsucker any day.

But this is not a dichotomy. There are games out there that aren't designed to suck you dry.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#228

Post by nottorp »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #167

If you haven't watched Tim Sweeney's appearance on Lex Fridman (which went live two days ago ironically), he discusses this battle against Apple, which he's maintained at a furious pace for years. He goes into detail on how the previous guidelines stifle innovation, how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.…

It's sad that the entities that forced Apple to be more open are free to play peddlers...

> has been a gold standard for F2P monetization

Every F2P game is the same. They waste your time until you buy IAPs out of boredom. What gold standard?

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#229

Post by hnlmorg »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #50
hnlmorg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically the App Store only exists because of the ridicule Apple received when they announced their new smartphone which then only supported 3rd party applications as web apps. Back then, native apps were considered a “must have” feature for smartphones. How times have changed.

The itunes store predates the iphone. The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs. And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone. I remember regularly using the iphone optimized version of Google Reader on Symbian, which of course had its own webkit based browser. Worked pretty well in 20…

> The itunes store predates the iphone.

As does thousands of other online stores but that doesn’t mean they are App Stores too.

> The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs.

You’re basically just reiterating what I said here but in more favourable language.

At the end of the day, public demand was for native apps and the App Store was born from that. So all I’m doing is making a throw away comment about how times have changed.

> And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone.

Oh it really was. At the time it was heads and shoulders above anything else’s available for portable devices.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#230

Post by BobaFloutist »

coldcode wrote: post #69

At the risk of not piling on to the Apple dislike here, if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company. I presume even more scam apps will take your money and ignore your complaints; imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back…

That's literally the biggest selling point of credit cards too, you don't need to argue with every business you paid, just charge back your credit card. Apple didn't remotely invent "single point of dispute."
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