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Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

news.patreon.com

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Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#971

Post by dwaite »

danShumway wrote: post #927
dwaite wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does Apple's refusal to allow apps to tell users about lower prices elsewhere make this claim more likely to be true or less likely to be true? If this is a free choice that consumers are making, why does Apple need to hide it from them? In many markets, Apple does let a dev link users to external payments options. But the dev agreed to basically pay Apple an origination fee to publish an iOS app in their store. Th…

> But the dev agreed to basically pay Apple an origination fee to publish an iOS app in their store. This is its own can of worms, but doesn't really change much about what I said above. That might be exactly your point though? That Apple has multiple tools to leverage to make sure that it's impossible to compete with their payment processor if you're building an app? Sometimes I misjudge the intent of a comment. App…

> That might be exactly your point though? That Apple has multiple tools to leverage to make sure that it's impossible to compete with their payment processor if you're building an app?

Apple wants you to use their payment processor because it is more convenient than auditing/p and potentially suing companies for breaking their contractual agreement around revenue sharing. They force transactions where they collect a royalty through in-app payments, and actually forbid other transactions from using it (like booking an Uber).

It is also a better end user experience.

But you aren’t paying 30% for a particular end user experience feature. You are paying what Apple put into the agreement as what they think they are owed from the value their ecosystem provides.

So Apple split their “payment processing” to 3% and their “using our tools, platform, store and infrastructure” to 27%. It’s certainly possible to undercut 3% for payment processing.

The real problem is 27% of revenue excludes entire categories of services, but that isn’t something regulators can easily force - they can push for services to be unbundled, but not that a company otherwise charges too much for a nonessential product.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#972

Post by advael »

bluescrn wrote: post #307
advael wrote: post #149

We need to kill the phone duopoly A big part of it is restrictive and onerous standards on cellular firmware that act as a compliance moat for Apple and Google (and seem designed to enable surveillance more than anything), but if we fail to get open-source alternatives via commonsense regulatory reform the antitrust guns need to come out. When smartphones are often the only authentication mechanism accepted by major…

> We need to kill the phone duopoly We also need to save the world wide web. Most of these 'apps' have no need to exist.

Strongly agree, but the existence of platform-integrated DRM is a moral hazard that current incentives don't seem to have a mechanism for overcoming, and the only mechanisms that seem to work require open or at least regulated platforms

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#973

Post by peebeefive »

The solution is so fiendishly simple I am astonished not to see it suggested elsewhere yet.

Back when I were a lad, there was this thing called the world wide web...

Apps as a crappy, less capable front-end for what is just a webpage anyway is not a new trend, but it has gotten crappier and stupider over time. Patreon should just pull their app entirely from platforms that behave as predatory rent-seekers and work on making their mobile web interface top-notch. It's not that hard.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#974

Post by 0x6862 »

adamomada wrote: post #512
jjcm wrote: post #233

In my eyes the most egregious aspect of this is it’s a financial transaction between two people that they’re taking a 30% cut of. I see 30% as fine for things like IAP for digital games and such, but somehow in this lens it feels wrong. One proposal for a compromise that would feel fair: Apple gets 30% of the app creator’s take rate. IE if patreon’s take rate is 8%, Apple should get 30% of that , not 30% of the full…

If it was a financial transaction between two people, then Apple couldn’t possibly take any cut of it.

They force you to use their billing system exclusively

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#975

Post by danShumway »

tshaddox wrote: post #946
danShumway wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... they would give Patreon money by going to their website? Is this a niche market that would never have been available to Patreon that Apple is helping Patreon access, or is this Apple needing to en-mass protect its users from themselves as a result of them being too.. I don't know, weak willed(?) not to pay for Patreon using another method? It's not both.

Well, for a popular and somewhat mainstream service like Patreon, it likely would be both. Patreon likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and who would never go to the Patreon website but who would be comfortable making an iOS in-app purchase. And Patreon also likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and would be comfortable going to the Patreon website to subscribe…

> but I suspect it's a niche that Patreon is very interested in (both because Patreon can't engage them through any other channel, and because they probably have above-average discretionary spending).

It's interesting that the existence of this supposed niche is entirely contained within the larger group of people who are kept unaware of the choice being made. Makes it a little hard to estimate or talk about what that niche actually is since they're always going to be an invisible subset of the users who are unaware of other payment methods or of the increased fees they're paying, and who are by Apple policy not allowed to be informed.

> You might as well say that an operating system implementing memory protection is "protecting users from themselves."

I guess readers can decide for themselves whether a store banning telling consumers about an alternative payment method is the same thing as memory protection.

I would suggest that one key difference between antivirus/memory protection and Apple's app store policies is that antivirus doesn't need to desperately try to hide the fact from me that it exists.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#976

Post by tshaddox »

danShumway wrote: post #975
tshaddox wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for a popular and somewhat mainstream service like Patreon, it likely would be both. Patreon likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and who would never go to the Patreon website but who would be comfortable making an iOS in-app purchase. And Patreon also likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and would be comfortable going to the Patreon website to subscribe…

> but I suspect it's a niche that Patreon is very interested in (both because Patreon can't engage them through any other channel, and because they probably have above-average discretionary spending). It's interesting that the existence of this supposed niche is entirely contained within the larger group of people who are kept unaware of the choice being made. Makes it a little hard to estimate or talk about what tha…

> It's interesting that the existence of this supposed niche is entirely contained within the larger group of people who are kept unaware of the choice being made.

I doubt a significant portion of this niche is “being kept unaware” that Patreon has a website. They probably would simply never, ever find themselves on Patreon’s website. This is basically the polar opposite of myself, who has used Patreon for many years but have never remotely considered using their smartphone app. Different people are different.

> I guess readers can decide for themselves whether a store banning telling consumers about an alternative payment method is the same thing as memory protection.

The question isn’t whether they’re “the same.” A better question to ask is how satisfied are Apple’s users compared to users of other competing products, and what can that be attributed to?

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#977

Post by tshaddox »

danShumway wrote: post #975
tshaddox wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for a popular and somewhat mainstream service like Patreon, it likely would be both. Patreon likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and who would never go to the Patreon website but who would be comfortable making an iOS in-app purchase. And Patreon also likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and would be comfortable going to the Patreon website to subscribe…

> but I suspect it's a niche that Patreon is very interested in (both because Patreon can't engage them through any other channel, and because they probably have above-average discretionary spending). It's interesting that the existence of this supposed niche is entirely contained within the larger group of people who are kept unaware of the choice being made. Makes it a little hard to estimate or talk about what tha…

> I would suggest that one key difference between antivirus/memory protection and Apple's app store policies is that antivirus doesn't need to desperately try to hide the fact from me that it exists.

There is in fact an enormous industry of software and operating system features designed to make it as difficult as possible for the user to circumvent.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#979

Post by jug »

danShumway wrote: post #616
danpalmer wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not. Apple do all the billing. You have no mechanism to link up users and bills or change users billing. The only way would be to notify all subscribers to cancel their subscription, hope they do that, and then notify them all to resubscribe afterwards, which would obviously be catastrophic for subscription revenue, as well as a terrible user experience.

I wonder why Patreon isn't hammering this point more if that's the case. This seems to me to be an almost bigger problem than the loss of the per-creation billing. Not that losing per-creation billing is good, but Patreon has been threatening it for a while, and there are ways it could in theory be simulated. But this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... with…

> Arguably even a bigger deal than the 30% tax, since I assume this change would affect everyone regardless of where they subscribe from.

I wouldn't assume this until confirmed. The way I read these news is the typical Apple scenario, where if you subscribe from the app, there's an added 30% subscription fee and a loss of all control from the subscription by Patreon, all control and all limitations handed over to Apple, all subscription cancellations, all billing complaints, everything.

But you can still have a parallel system without the fee on the web, the cannot be advertised or guided to it from the app (at least this used to be the case), but it's also as usual completely handled by the developer.

Patreon is probably removing the on-purchase pay model even on the web because it's inherently incompatible with the basic Apple model and would cause a major disconnect in what the user can expect.

But I don't think the scenario with paused subscriptions is quite the same. Patreon would simply allow them to be paused, while if subscribed with Apple, the button on the web could simply be disabled or gone, or heck, the entire subscription page on Patreon gone, with just info text "This subscription is managed from your device". I mean, many devs do it like that at least.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#980

Post by matwood »

kllrnohj wrote: post #588
matwood wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of Apple's argument why they think they are owed 30%. They have built and nurture the most affluent set of mobile users with a CC ready to charge. A company leaving Android is ho hum, but leaving iOS is business ending. How valuable then is it to be on iOS? 30%? I'm not making a judgement on right or wrong, but I see many people just thinking about infrastructure and not realizing Apple sees iOS user bas…

Should Microsoft get 30% of everything you do on a computer? That'd be utterly absurd. Apple already got paid for those users when the user bought the device. Why do they get a share of the profits of a completely independent transaction between two other parties? It's ridiculous.

> Should Microsoft get 30% of everything you do on a computer? That'd be utterly absurd.

This is what happens on consoles today. Apple views the iPhone as a closed and complete ecosystem where licensees are allowed to write apps - like a console. The hardware, OS, and App Store are viewed as a single entity and not distinct.

Not saying I agree, but it's important to understand Apple's argument. Given the ruling from the Epic case I think Apple will win the majority of any action taken against the AppStore (not a monopoly, business terms are irrelevant). IMO where Apple is vulnerable is interop like with messaging. I can only guess Apple's lawyers think the same, hence Apple's fairly recent push into RCS.

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