Apple reforms App Store rules to allow third-party payment methods in the U.S. but will still charge a commission fee - gHacks Tech News
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Apple has adjusted its App Store rules to allow third-party payment methods. But developers will need to pay a commission for using them.

“You don’t need to use us for payments but you still need to pay us for the payments we had nothing to do with” is perfectly monopolistic

Well, they do provide the AppStore and the whole underlying infrastructure. So a fee in and off itself is not unreasonable.

However, since the AppStore is the only channel for selling/downloading apps it reeks of monopoly (which Apple is rightly being investigated for).

It is unreasonable if they are not the one providing payment infra.

They already charge developers 100$ pa for the app store account. If that doesn’t cover their costs, they can increase it, but going after 3rd party payments is pure greed.

Why does providing the App Store entitle them to a percentage of in app purchases instead of, say, a fee per download or something?

If you think about it, a fee per app download is a lot less flexible when it comes to monetising purchases. Means free apps either become paid or shove into you a lot more micro transactions. That exact model is what made devs get mad at unity (although unity doesn’t provide the download infrastructure and it was on top of a cut)

Fair. I still don’t think that entitles Apple to a cut of purchases in the app, but you’re right that a download fee sucks.

Sounds eerily similar to taxes.

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Taxes contribute to providing services and infrastructure to the people. This takes money from the people and deposits it into the bank accounts of the wealthy. I see two very different things.

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