There's "a cut" and then there's 30%. Pretending Patreon's cut is morally or even objectively equivalent to Apple's is a little bit of a stretch.

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cedws 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree that 30% is high but the arguments I see online are generally in favor of a cut to 0%, not a reduction. If you get into the weeds of what the cut should be then it gets messy, who gets to decide? How do you determine what is actually fair for all parties?

I would argue Patreon is far more parasitic than Apple in this case, they're shaving off 10% for a pretty simple service.

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kg 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Payment processors are generally really wary of services like Patreon. Cohost tried to set one up and was unable to find someone willing to stick by a commitment to process payments for an equivalent service.

I think it's reasonable to say Patreon shouldn't take 10%, but you can't ring up Visa and get a regular 2-3% rate from them for something like Patreon, most likely, due to things like brand risk, chargeback rates, etc.

Then there's all the administrative overhead involved in disbursing payments to creators from all sorts of different legal jurisdictions and reporting information to the right government agencies. I can easily imagine the operating costs of Patreon being something like 7-8% of the money they handle.

I haven't seen anyone in this particular thread calling for Apple's cut to be 0%. I do think they could afford that, but a common refrain is that Epic's rate of 12% would be sustainable, and I agree with that. It's also the case that Apple moved to a gradual rate system where low-income developers only pay 15%, which kind of proves that they don't actually need 30%, they just want 30%.

	▲	cedws 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks, I didn't consider these things.