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Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#651

Post by seemaze »

TheDong wrote: post #519
saimiam wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a user almost exclusively uses the Patreon ios app to consume the artist’s content and likes to live inside the ios ecosystem for frictionless payments using the card on file/privacy/UX/whatever, then I feel apple should get to set the terms of engagement. If you were a chain store in a high end mall where customers cars were all parked for free by valets, mall staff knew their names, and generally made them feel…

Presumably you also would agree that it's fair if Chrome, Windows, and Lenovo all charged me 30% each for using Patreon via Chrome+Windows on a thinkpad, right? They're doing about as much to facilitate my use of Patreon as Apple is. This isn't like a mall at all. This is like a web browser, where apps are webpages, and Apple is insisting that the contents of that webpage are something they can dictate all payment te…

>What next, should apple take a 30% cut of my rent because I found my apartment on the Craigslist app? Should they take a 30% of my train ticket that I purchased using the Safari app?

Sure they could, and usage of those products to purchase goods would nominally drop to 0%. People do not care about a lot of things, but they do care about losing money.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#652

Post by CGMthrowaway »

nabla9 wrote: post #327

Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales Revenue $32 B Operating Costs $7 B [1] Estimated Profit $25 B Operating Margin ~78% [1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs. Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were…

That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.

Microsoft Office: Revenue $45B Operating Costs $12B Profit $33B Operating Margin 75%

Google Search Ads: Revenue $175B Operating Costs $45B Profit $130B Operating Margin 75%

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#653

Post by yearolinuxdsktp »

Happy to pay 42% higher Patreon fees in exchange for ease of subscription control, visibility, safety and ease of payment with in-app Apple payments.

It’s funny seeing people call 78% operating margin too high, while we all know that software VCs demand 90% margin from their startups, and if it wasn’t Apple, people here would call that an excellent business.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#654

Post by ryukoposting »

mhitza wrote: post #203

Just stop publishing the app, not every little thing needs an app. What the use for the app anyway? Notifications and apple pay?

I use the Patreon app. It's great. I get to see stuff from my favorite creatives weeks (sometimes months) early, and ad-free. Since many of them are youtubers and I don't pay google to show me less ads, this is a huge value prop. And, the Patreon app can cast videos to my TV, so it's really a complete experience.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#655

Post by burgreblast »

wlesieutre wrote: post #542
silvestrov wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make the argument that Patreon isn't much more than a banking app. It just focuses on the receiver of the money than the sender. I think Apple is slowly killing apps with this policy. Everybody will slowly move to "web only" as 30% would kill their ability to compete with anybody else. This will likely be much stronger in countries where iPhones do not have the same market share as in the US.

Honestly I wouldn't be that shocked if Apple tried demanding a 30% royalty on bank deposits and bills paid using iPhone apps. They've decided the future of their company depends on being huge assholes about it.

When you use Apple Pay, Apple collects ~0.15% (15 bps) from the issuing banks for credit. $1B in transaction volume = $1.5M

In 2022 the total volume was estimated at $6T * .15% = $9B. Real number would be maybe half due to lower fees on debit, but it's hugely profitable for Apple, and carries zero risk.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#656

Post by Almondsetat »

silvestrov wrote: post #527
rob74 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that in the case of Patreon, any fee for Apple is unjustified. Apple can justify their fee on app purchases/subscriptions in the app store, but Patreon is not an app subscription, the money goes mostly from the patrons to the people they support. Ok, Patreon takes a cut to cover their operating costs, and also make a profit (not sure how profitable they are currently), but I really can't see how Apple, who do…

You could make the argument that Patreon isn't much more than a banking app. It just focuses on the receiver of the money than the sender. I think Apple is slowly killing apps with this policy. Everybody will slowly move to "web only" as 30% would kill their ability to compete with anybody else. This will likely be much stronger in countries where iPhones do not have the same market share as in the US.

You couldn't make that argument because Patreon is also a platform to host content, not just send money. If it was something like a twitch donation app the argument would make more sense

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#658

Post by Topgamer7 »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #544

Sometimes I think the 30% was supposed to be 3% originally, and no one noticed the decimal was in the wrong place when they shipped it, and then people paid it anyway, so they kept it. 30% is just so unreasonable that it would be totally understandable if someone would believe this.

Nah, they probably used pre-existing marketplaces like steam as an example of what "they could get away with"

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#659

Post by JKCalhoun »

panstromek wrote: post #626
bogwog wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and that is also excessive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I'm not judging that, it just seems to contradict the "But Steam shows us another model..." sentence, so I'm trying to make sense of that.

You're right, I didn't know it was 30%.

Checking an LLM, it sounds like they more or less all charge 30%. That's shit.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#660

Post by sroussey »

browningstreet wrote: post #630
TheDong wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you also would agree that it's fair if Chrome, Windows, and Lenovo all charged me 30% each for using Patreon via Chrome+Windows on a thinkpad, right? They're doing about as much to facilitate my use of Patreon as Apple is. This isn't like a mall at all. This is like a web browser, where apps are webpages, and Apple is insisting that the contents of that webpage are something they can dictate all payment te…

Chrome, Windows and Lenovo don't have the payment system baked in, with all the consumer protections that come with it. I'm not entirely pro-Apple percentage in this argument, but I think people often dismiss the magical thing that Apple created with the app store and their payment/subscription system. The rest of the world keeps ripping users off, and Apple's walled garden is as protected a thing as it gets. I've go…

The cost side of that protection is < 0.1% not 30%.
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