Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 944 posts

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

#661

Post by pksebben »

ndr42 wrote: post #400
WA wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is outrageously wrong. Back in 2011, the pricing model for "an app in your pocket" was 99 cents. The universal pricing model of apps was a one-time fee and the pricing range was that of an mp3 roughly. 30% of that is a lot. App sales worked only in volume. If you sold software over the internet, you had PayPal, which had a flat fee of $0.35 + 1.7% or so and if your shareware was $30, the transaction fee essentia…

I was thinking about something comparable, where there is a digital storefront, payment processing, security, delivering, installing on all my devices and so on... Steam comes to mind. They take 30% (and I think 5% for credit card or whatever). So I do not think that "outrageously wrong" is characterizing my remarks adequately.

Steam is fundamentally different in very important ways.

Your phone is general purpose, steam is focused on a narrow band of market

The iOS store adds nothing but cost to the purchasing process, with hilariously terrible discoverability and sorting, steam makes navigating and discoverability breezy and easy

Your phone is arguably not an optional part of your life, whereas nobody ever missed an important call because they weren't on steam

Steam does not take any money from apps or companies for transactions it was not involved in. Here, and in other cases, the costs of doing business with apple extend to people who have no relationship with apple at all

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

#662

Post by panstromek »

bogwog wrote: post #553
panstromek wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam takes 30% cut, though?

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

I have to respond to your point, though. Whether 30% cut is excessive depends on whether devs feel like they are getting a good deal. As far as I can tell, game developers don't seem to complain about Steam cut very much, it seems like the value you get is worth it.

For example, this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/10wvgoo/do_you_think... seems like majority is positive about it, even though people debate. When Apple tax is brought up, there's almost never even a discussion there, it's pretty universally hated.

Apple seems to have almost adveserial relationship to its developers. I deploy to App Store and I feel like I'm getting screwed. Even compared to Google, which takes the same cut, but does bahave a lot more nicely to its developers.

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

#663

Post by dmix »

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…

Those margins are pretty normal in software, especially a mature product like that.

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

#664

Post by ryukoposting »

tracker1 wrote: post #615

And this is a big part of why I don't own an iOS device, and likely won't be purchasing another laptop from them, despite liking the hardware generally. Not that I like Google much more re: Android and locking down side-loading more than before.

I was considering GrapheneOS when I bought my latest phone 2 years ago, but decided to stay with Android in the end. It has become very clear to me that I made the wrong choice.

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

#665

Post by fauigerzigerk »

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 rest of the world keeps ripping users off, and Apple's walled garden is as protected a thing as it gets.

This keeps getting repeated but it's not actually my experience. Not even Apple believes it, otherwise they could avoid a lot of legal and regulatory trouble by giving users a choice: Pay through Apple for an extra 30% protection fee.

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

#667

Post by podgorniy »

seanhunter wrote: post #515
podgorniy wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR: user reach and convenience (or avoidance of the inconvenience artificially created by the app store companies to ensure own monopoly). App stores are another source of distribution of the platform. Apps create another engagement channel. Apps are another way to reach more people and keep them "hooked" longer (push notifications, tighter integration with the system). Poor performance of the website-only apps is…

Thanks for taking the time to write this. I can totally see how my original message may have come across as snarky but it was honestly not intended as such. I sometimes feel like I don't understand my fellow humans at all and this is one of those times. I can see why patreon benefits from users using their app, but as an occasional user of patreon, as I say I am baffled that it's the sort of thing users will install…

Cheers. It's hard to distinguish genuine from non-genuine people online. Especially when they ask things which appear trivial from where one stands. Thanks for having patience.

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

#668

Post by Izkata »

debugnik wrote: post #636
Izkata wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not exclusive to the app, as far as I know it's just another interface to that same exclusive content available through the website.

Discussion here started on whether users check apps more often than websites and whether Patreon is the kind of platform that one might want to check often for new content. I'm not sure how has the goalpost here moved to app-exclusivity, I understood exclusive here to mean "exclusive to Patreon" as opposed to supporting a creator that posts everything for free somewhere else, which is the use case that made that one…

They specifically said "app" which is why I interpreted it as exclusive to the app.

The other way around is a little confusing as a question because that's the primary purpose of Patreon and is mentioned on the homepage marketing (multiple payment tiers with exclusive content).

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

#669

Post by rubyfan »

idiotsecant wrote: post #484
rubyfan wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone suggests Apple should get nothing for their app store services, just that it shouldn’t be 30% of every transaction processed through every iOS app.

I think that is in fact exactly what GP is suggesting.

I don’t read it that way. I think the point is it doesn’t make sense that apple is taking a cut of a transaction that is not in their payment rails*. Apple can still be compensated for their App store service without using a model that takes 30% of all transactions, e.g. a listing fee, an app review fee, etc.

*And anything on their payment rails should have a normal transaction fee, e.g. Stripe’s retail rate is 2.9% + $0.30.

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

#670

Post by devmor »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #652
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%

> 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.

While technically true, this argument doesn't provide any merit to the discussion. The App Store backed purchase for the Patreon subscription would not exist at all without the creator's work and investment in creating their form of content.

In the absence of the App Store, the creator would still have access to their patrons via mobile web and payment via the methods already provided by Patreon. The app is merely a convenience - it's a hard sell that this convenience is worth 30% of the creator's revenue through the platform.

Post reply on HN