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

As I said, my point is just that it's not something I should be obligated to pay for.

But, if you're looking for counterexamples to show it can be done for less than a 15% cut, they're around. Almost every eBay category charges less than 15%, for example. And, as another user pointed out, Epic takes less than 15%. AliExpress charges 5-8% on average. Etsy is I think something like 6.5%.

> > Why cant this happen on Apple devices too?

> There are many ways to interpret that question - a hypothetical pondering, or a "why doesn't it work this way?" in the most direct sense. I interpreted it as the latter.

Yes, this is actually my point. That question isn't clearly saying, "you should do this on Apple devices too" it's asking, "why not?" The answer to that question could be anything like, "Because Apple and they're users believe it's better this way" or something more technical like, "software architecture limitations in " or anything like that. You broadened your interpretation to assume that OP was advocating for Apple to make the change, but I don't see anything in their statement that would suggest that they are. You could maybe say, "well they should have clarified in the original" but then every comment would have to turn into a long list of what the person isn't saying, which could go on indefinitely. If you're really not sure what they meant, you could also practice the time-honored tradition of asking them and then dealing with their actual position, instead of assuming and addressing a strawman.

> > I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning.

> Isn't this exactly what you've done to my comment?

Hmm, possibly, I don't believe that I have based on what I wrote above in this comment above, but I will definitely consider deeper whether I've committed the same fallacy.

Btw, FWIW I don't mean anything personal by it. Nearly everyone does this to some extent (including me I'm sure), especially when it's a subject that we've been around repeatedly with lots of different people. There definitely are people taht post with hidden agendas and ask questions that aren't in good faith, so I'm not even saying we're always wrong when we do this. However, I do think it's important for discussion/conversation to strive not to make assumptions about somebody that we don't know. Honest questions can frequently sound the same as the bad faith questions, but assuming bad faith is an instant conversation killer.

> who is taking the concept of free markets seriously

The EU. Let me explain, because this was confusing:

In US political debate, free markets have become synonymous with ”let companies do what they want”. Today, most of US ”markets” are neither free, nor (arguably) even markets at all, such as Amazon or health insurance. It is a mix between feudal system and protection racket.

Just like ”freedom isn’t free” in terms of civil liberties, same goes (imo) for markets. If you want to optimize for ”freedom” of markets, that means a non-zero amount of regulating them. This is obvious both in theory and by opening your eyes and looking outside.

As far as how to regulate them, I believe the EU is doing a good job, especially in the face of novel technology and business topologies. Basically, allow everything that isn’t deliberately anti-competitive. Because, drumroll, competition is fundamental for markets to work, at all.

Sorry for the confusion. It’s hard to make points when words mean completely different things in different parts of the world.

Nothing stops them from doing that today.

But alternative payment flows will put some pressure on Apple to improve IAP features that many developers want to provide better experiences for their customers. Like IAP kind of sucks, unless your revenue model is tricking kids into charging things to mom's CC or finding whales and getting them addicted to your gambling app.

Why would different business practices shield console makers in the first place, legally speaking? As in, even if all consoles were always sold at a loss, how would that help someone's legal case that they should be excluded here? Does the law state that, "if your business practices are incompatible with antitrust legislation, and you'd end up having to raise prices, shut down, or decrease your CEO's paycheck, if we enforced it on you, then we won't do it" or something along those lines?