30% was always excessive.

I suspect developers are looking for these workaround because of the 30%. If Apple had asked for, say, 10%, would there be as many developers looking for loopholes?

I don't know. Apple perhaps should ask for compensation for "vouching for" the developer's app, hosting the app, distributing the app. But Steam shows us another model where the developer themselves pay a modest up-front cost to have their app hosted ($100) and then Steam steps out of the way.

I wonder if this would go a long way too to thinning the herd so to speak from the Apple App Store—perhaps improve the overall quality of the apps submitted.

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cyberax 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think a lot of developers were willing to let it slide when App Store was a luxury market. You could just ignore it and make regular webapps and/or desktop software.

But now iOS is the most popular computing platform in the US. We no longer _have_ an option to ignore it.

And 30% is just crazy. And it's _on_ _top_ of all other expenses: Apple hardware that you need to buy to develop for iOS, $100 per year subscription fee, overhead of using Apple's shitty tools, etc.

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scottyah 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To be fair, the fee is really 15%- 30% only comes into play only after you've made $1mm USD in the prior year.

	▲	johnnyanmac 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's the issue, though. These aren't the Patreon devs running the app. These are creators using Patreon. It's 2nd level rent seeking.

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panstromek 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Steam takes 30% cut, though?

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bogwog 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, and that is also excessive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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panstromek an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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panstromek 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	JKCalhoun an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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