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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

#311

Post by pokot0 »

pqtyw wrote: post #106
pokot0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more interesting question is: who is “self”? US is historically more prone to favor business, while EU seems more concerned in protecting consumers. And of course there is the noise generated by incompetence/corruption/lobbying that makes the question of “in the interest of whom are laws made?” very nuanced.

> US is historically more prone to favor business, while EU seems more concerned in protecting consumers. Well that's not that obvious... Sure EU is more than willing to protect consumers from foreign(American) megacorporation because the cost of doing that is very low. Entrenched major local companies? Well stifling competition through excessive regulation and propping up to bit too fall semi-zombie corporations is…

Do you have examples of targeted protections against foreign companies? Everything that comes to mind to me applies to all companies local or foreign.

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

#312

Post by chipsrafferty »

14 wrote: post #268
hayst4ck wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are implementing Skinner boxes[1] for children. There are literally "engagement" engineers actively doing A/B tests on children to see what makes them more addicted or gets them to spend more money or time on their platform. There are humans literally doing experiments on children to figure out what stimulus results in more addicted behavior. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

Who cares? My kids asked me for skins for years. As the one who owned a credit card and would be the one needed to pay for it I laughed them out of the room. Maybe parents should learn to parent and tell their kids no. My kid now older and with a job now tells me how he remembers when he used to ask for skins and I would say no damn way. He also says now that he makes his own money and buys things himself there is no…

I get spending $20 on one skin to support the development of a game you enjoy.

Just don't see the point in having multiple.

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

#313

Post by SSLy »

reylas wrote: post #287
McGlockenshire wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple was worried about this, they shouldn't have flaunted the court order in a way that made the judge say in the subsequent order that "this is an injunction, not a negotiation."

I understand what you are saying, but not what I am getting at. If you were a developer and had a choice between a "one-time fee" with Apple taking 30% vs "free to download" but redirect to an outside payment system, which one would you chose? I am worried that now game companies are incentivized to abandon "initial purchase" games/apps and go the "loot-box, subscription" route. Is this the final nail in the pay one…

>Is this the final nail in the pay one time for games coffin?

No, these will continue to be made. Just that the Premium iOS Games market will also stay much smaller than the IAP horror world the rest is.

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

#314

Post by cgriswald »

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.

I don’t need no-questions refunds. I need fair transactions.

Apple is too powerful in this relationship to provide it. If I have a problem with a merchant I can go to my credit card company about it. If I have a problem with my credit card company I might lose out on that one transaction but I can get a different credit card.

If I have a problem with Apple (or Steam or Nintendo or…) I either have to take the abuse or lose past “purchases”.

And the merchant themselves can do no questions asked refunds anyway.

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

#315

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#316

Post by nashashmi »

saurik wrote: post #296
layer8 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don’t think it works that way. Apple’s EU subsidiaries are separate legal entities, and everything that happens on the EU app store is not an activity that occurs within the US and would be subject to US federal law. Even Tim Sweeney implicitly acknowledged this: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/04/30/epic-games-apple-peace-...

The EU app store--even as a separate legal entity--doesn't operate independently: it takes its marching orders from Apple, Inc., and Apple, Inc. has been required to not do this thing to developers, not merely directly but indirectly even by persons (which includes corporations) they are merely "in active concert or participation with". The EU app store doesn't even have a separate submission portal or a separate app…

Companies other than apple inc would not be covered. However, subsidiaries should be covered. And app store in europe must be a subsidiary.

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

#317

Post by satvikpendem »

14 wrote: post #268
hayst4ck wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are implementing Skinner boxes[1] for children. There are literally "engagement" engineers actively doing A/B tests on children to see what makes them more addicted or gets them to spend more money or time on their platform. There are humans literally doing experiments on children to figure out what stimulus results in more addicted behavior. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

Who cares? My kids asked me for skins for years. As the one who owned a credit card and would be the one needed to pay for it I laughed them out of the room. Maybe parents should learn to parent and tell their kids no. My kid now older and with a job now tells me how he remembers when he used to ask for skins and I would say no damn way. He also says now that he makes his own money and buys things himself there is no…

This is the root cause. I don't get the part about kids spending ceaselessly on skins, who is giving them the money?

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

#318

Post by Xelbair »

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.…

>No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc.

instead you get peak FOMO, where you never know where item will return. It might be in a week, it might be in few years. you never know.

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

#319

Post by [deleted] »

bsimpson wrote: post #173
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.…

Tim's a selfish businessman, whose interests just happen to align with the public interest in this instance. He makes excuses about Linux market share when asked why Fortnite isn't on the Steam Deck, then ships a build for Windows ARM. Fortnite Festival, their Rock Band recreation in the Fortnite ecosystem, recently started limiting when you can purchase songs in an effort to get people to impulse buy them when avail…

[deleted]

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

#320

Post by satvikpendem »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #44
deeThrow94 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it adds legitimacy to the free market spirit seen in markets like EU, which has been criticized for making up arbitrary rules for self-interest. I'm confused a) who is taking the concept of free markets seriously, especially in this context where markets (and competition) are arbitrarily defined and owned by corporations and and b) who would view self-interested laws as either surprising or bad? Of course laws a…

This is HN, the Church of the Free Market is well represented. If you haven't yet seen someone give the "free markets create competition" speech on Monday and the "my company aims to capture this space and then entrench a monopoly with economies of scale / network effects / platform effects / two sided markets / last mile dynamics" pitch on Tuesday, just hang around HN a bit more. You won't have to wait long.

A monopoly isn't a free market though, because, well, the market is not free. This ruling is precisely about making the market of payment processing on iOS more free, creating such a market.
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