And apps not from their App Store are not.
Thanks for proving my point.
And just why do you think the App Store apps are sandboxed? Because Apple won’t let them through otherwise.
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Apple Removes Fortnite From App Store [Update: Epic Files Lawsuit Against Apple]
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And apps not from their App Store are not.
Thanks for proving my point.
And just why do you think the App Store apps are sandboxed? Because Apple won’t let them through otherwise.
Many businesses wanted to have their app offered separately from the App store not to pay the 30% fee, but they cannot. BEcause Apple is like a Mafia family, either you sell through me or nothing.
IMO control and the cut Apple takes are two separate things. Apple can have everything go through the App Store and also not take 30% of someone’s business. And as far as the whole providing access to billions of customers...OK if Apple deserves a commission/tax for that then why does it only apply to digital goods? Is Apple not providing access to billions of customers for Uber and Lyft and Panera too?
Somehow Apple and the App Store have survived not getting 30% (or 15%) from streaming content. Heck Apple hit its services commitment to Wall Street 6 months early even though apps like Netflix, Spotify, HBO Max etc. aren’t giving Apple a cut of their business. Apple’s services business should be built on its own services not rent seeking from 3rd parties.
Somehow Apple and the App Store have survived not getting 30% (or 15%) from streaming content. Heck Apple hit its services commitment to Wall Street 6 months early even though apps like Netflix, Spotify, HBO Max etc. aren’t giving Apple a cut of their business. Apple’s services business should be built on its own services not rent seeking from 3rd parties.
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Perfect summary of what Epic has been pursuing in the PC digital storefront space.
Apple - disregarding their marketing and messaging spiel - is after the same thing.
The "sandboxing" is done by the os, you can't bypass it by using a "sideloaded" app
Apple has claimed they are all about "making great products".
Making the most money would be more accurate.
30% commission is ridiculous.
Making the most money would be more accurate.
30% commission is ridiculous.
Everyone should be able to write an app and sell it directly to consumers, bypassing the App store, if they wish to take upon themselves the expenses of hosting a server and managing their own customers. Alternatively, they should be able to rely on App store if they choose that business model. That choice should be possible. Anything else is an illegal monopoly, or it should be, and people should not accept it.
You tell me. Just how many apps have been pulled from Google’s play store weeks and even months are release due to security risks. Now, how many apps have Apple pulled for the same reasons?
Actions speak louder than words. Ask a developer who stringent they are. Oh wait, you are.
It took us five weeks to push one update through Apple once because they took umbrage at the way we implemented a feature.
Meanwhile, since you seem to be of the opinion that if Apple were more like Google and allow other app stores - try this on for size- this is text directly taken from Epics lawsuit against Google:
Notwithstanding its promises to make Android devices open to competition, Google has erected contractual and technological barriers that foreclose competing ways of distributing apps to Android users, ensuring that the Google Play Store accounts for nearly all the downloads of apps from app stores on Android devices.
Sooooo, hows that alternative freedom idea working out for you know?
Epic benefited from Apple’s tools, distribution platform, and their millions of users. But they are too greedy to give back. Disgusting
From Arstechnica
An Apple App Dev posted views on 30%
DOOManiac Ars Tribunus Militum
REPLYAUG 13, 2020 11:09 AM
[edit]
Well that didn't take long. Seems this whole thing was scripted from the start...
[/edit]
Given the work-to-cut ratio, 30% may have been fair a decade ago when there wasn't a new app every 10 seconds and you actually got something out of being on their store, but these days, with the economies of scale being what they are, its just way too much. Especially on in-app purchases.
But I do want to dispel the myth that Apple/Google/Steam are doing "nothing". Here's what me and my fellow developers are getting for our 30%:
- Credit Card transaction processing
- No liability from credit card processing. This is a big deal so I list it twice.
- Handles all refunds, stolen credit card chargebacks, fraud
- Placement (even if buried) on an easy to use store used by millions of customers
- Fast, reliable hosting & distribution on global CDNs
- Scheduled release times, possibly staggered by region
- Regional pricing (sometimes automatic)
- Platform services (user logins, leaderboards, in app purchases, authentication, anti-piracy measures)
- Maybe 5 minutes of marketing as your app/game shows up in the "new" section for the blink of an eye on launch day. Maybe.
Every time I get upset about the 30% cut I remember all this - especially credit card legal liabilities - and I am fine with it again. Would prefer if it was only 15% or 20%, but I would much rather have the status quo as it is now than have to deal with that mess myself.
Last edited by DOOManiac on Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:23 pm
Up +104 (+116 / -12) Down
An Apple App Dev posted views on 30%
DOOManiac Ars Tribunus Militum
REPLYAUG 13, 2020 11:09 AM
- POPULAR
[edit]
Well that didn't take long. Seems this whole thing was scripted from the start...
[/edit]
Given the work-to-cut ratio, 30% may have been fair a decade ago when there wasn't a new app every 10 seconds and you actually got something out of being on their store, but these days, with the economies of scale being what they are, its just way too much. Especially on in-app purchases.
But I do want to dispel the myth that Apple/Google/Steam are doing "nothing". Here's what me and my fellow developers are getting for our 30%:
- Credit Card transaction processing
- No liability from credit card processing. This is a big deal so I list it twice.
- Handles all refunds, stolen credit card chargebacks, fraud
- Placement (even if buried) on an easy to use store used by millions of customers
- Fast, reliable hosting & distribution on global CDNs
- Scheduled release times, possibly staggered by region
- Regional pricing (sometimes automatic)
- Platform services (user logins, leaderboards, in app purchases, authentication, anti-piracy measures)
- Maybe 5 minutes of marketing as your app/game shows up in the "new" section for the blink of an eye on launch day. Maybe.
Every time I get upset about the 30% cut I remember all this - especially credit card legal liabilities - and I am fine with it again. Would prefer if it was only 15% or 20%, but I would much rather have the status quo as it is now than have to deal with that mess myself.
Last edited by DOOManiac on Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:23 pm
Up +104 (+116 / -12) Down
I think you have it backwards. The only people giving Apple money are Apple customers/consumers. Customers have already paid for all the development tools and the store ecosystem that is used to deliver the free apps that people crave.
Developers also pay annual subscriptions to Apple for access to the store delivery mechanism.
Developers do 99% of the work to bring software to the App Store, yet Apple demands to take a 30% cut from it's own customers for the privilege.
And you think Epic is the only greedy disgusting one here?
I read it before I wrote mine.
I'm also a software developer (have a team of devs these days, but I'm familiar with the economics and the technicalities. Have published on the App Store).
I pay market rates for all the things that developer mentioned and it's tiny; closer to 5% than 30% of revenue
Edit: probably closer to 2% than 5%
Dealing with CC transactions is a real PiTA. Having someone handle all that for you is a huge deal. 30% worth? No, but a sliding scale going up seems fair. First 1000 5%, first 500,000 10%, next 500,000 20% then 30% seems fairer.
But then I’m not running the App Store.
I do however buy a lot of apps - probably over $500 worth now. I know I pay more here than I would Google, but the quality here is far better.
Those rates are insane. Merchant fees get smaller, and risk gets lower, the more you transact. Nobody would offer to take a 30% cut to process fees risk-free with a straight face. That is money-laundering / dodgy business / payday loan territory.
You are mistaking the fees as simple transaction fees. They’re not. They’re fees to host and maintain apps and all the peripheral systems around them.
That costs money. You apparently don’t won’t to understand that because it starts to weaken your rant.
No, I pay CDN fees, AWS, GCP, Azure fees, etc. 7 digits worth each year. Data transfer and storage fees get smaller the more you do. Apple runs their own CDN (well, used to be Akamai but not sure these days) so their costs will be a smaller portion than what I deal with.
I've worked in companies that build datacenters and had to budget all of this down to fractions of pennies per unit of capacity.
The bigger the scale the smaller the costs (as a percentage).
You left off a big chunk of what that 30% covers: APIs for developers to write the code on the Apple platform, and app quality/security reviews. Granted the quality checks benefit consumers more than developers, and they can even seem like an unnecessary hurdle, but without that layer of security they wouldn’t have me or my family as customers, nor the millions of others who trust Apple more than Google and way, way more than “sideloaded” anything.
What you don’t get is that my idea helps developers grow. The more the grow the more they make. Their success is Apples success.
I too work in a company where we have a multi million dollar spend - and yes I negotiate costs down as a result.
That’s not an App Store helping new developers grow. The biggest complaint I hear is how expensive the charges are for small developers. This way they’d be able to grow at a cheaper rate.
If that's true (and I don't think it is, but lets assume so) then what you're saying is that all the "Free" apps like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram.... ...all those free apps from trillion dollar companies are subsidized by much smaller developers trying to sell their games?
Here’s the thing I feel many people are not seeing.
The iOS App Store is home to a ton of developers, many of which produce free apps that don’t earn them any revenue (or at least, not the sort that Apple can levy a 30% tax on).
I don’t think the annual $100 developer fee comes anywhere close to covering the cost of hosting and vetting and supporting the app. So the rest of the money has to come from somewhere (assuming we don’t want the App Store to be run at a loss).
So Apple could either increase the annual fee (which would penalise your small developers, especially if they are still in school and are coding for fun or as an experiment), or tax a percentage of everyone’s earnings (so the more successful ones pay more, which in turn goes towards offsetting the costs incurred by the less profitable apps).
Increasing the fee would serve to drive away the very developers that Apple is trying to attract to their platform, so I can see why Apple is hesitant to do so. Larger companies like amazon or Uber or even Epic have no problems paying a few hundred dollars a year, and Apple doesn’t need to court them. They will be on iOS by virtue of iOS being home to the best customers, so this platform is impossible for them to ignore.
Second, US antitrust law focuses on whether harm has been done to the consumer. Developers by definition are not Apple’s customers, so I don’t think any developer has a case. Not in the US at least.
Epic wants to break away from the control Apple has over their own App Store by introducing their own App Store, but if you think developers will pass on reduced App Store fees to consumers if and when this happens , then you clearly don’t understand how businesses work. Or what happens when taxes are cut for the wealthy.
I am willing to go out on a limb and say that Epic will be the one to end up on the wrong side of history, as is anyone who takes their side on this day. If you are upset about Apple pulling Fortnite from the App Store for violating App Store guidelines, direct your anger at Epic Games / Fortnite, not Apple, because Epic is the one who knowingly and wilfully broke the rules in the first place.
Like I said - if it’s a fight epic wants, it’s a fight I hope Apple will give them. Expect no quarter, and give none.
The iOS App Store is home to a ton of developers, many of which produce free apps that don’t earn them any revenue (or at least, not the sort that Apple can levy a 30% tax on).
I don’t think the annual $100 developer fee comes anywhere close to covering the cost of hosting and vetting and supporting the app. So the rest of the money has to come from somewhere (assuming we don’t want the App Store to be run at a loss).
So Apple could either increase the annual fee (which would penalise your small developers, especially if they are still in school and are coding for fun or as an experiment), or tax a percentage of everyone’s earnings (so the more successful ones pay more, which in turn goes towards offsetting the costs incurred by the less profitable apps).
Increasing the fee would serve to drive away the very developers that Apple is trying to attract to their platform, so I can see why Apple is hesitant to do so. Larger companies like amazon or Uber or even Epic have no problems paying a few hundred dollars a year, and Apple doesn’t need to court them. They will be on iOS by virtue of iOS being home to the best customers, so this platform is impossible for them to ignore.
Second, US antitrust law focuses on whether harm has been done to the consumer. Developers by definition are not Apple’s customers, so I don’t think any developer has a case. Not in the US at least.
Epic wants to break away from the control Apple has over their own App Store by introducing their own App Store, but if you think developers will pass on reduced App Store fees to consumers if and when this happens , then you clearly don’t understand how businesses work. Or what happens when taxes are cut for the wealthy.
I am willing to go out on a limb and say that Epic will be the one to end up on the wrong side of history, as is anyone who takes their side on this day. If you are upset about Apple pulling Fortnite from the App Store for violating App Store guidelines, direct your anger at Epic Games / Fortnite, not Apple, because Epic is the one who knowingly and wilfully broke the rules in the first place.
Like I said - if it’s a fight epic wants, it’s a fight I hope Apple will give them. Expect no quarter, and give none.
Honest answer. No idea. I think the game is toxic and never touched it myself or let my children touch it. It’s not the point, though.
I'm glad that there's other developers who are airing their grievances against the App Store in more classy ways. Regardless of how I feel about those grievances, this stunt by Epic Games is just so blatantly orchestrated that I find it hard to sympathize with them or their message.
1) Ship an update with the ability to introduce a feature that breaks the App Store rules they agreed to, and doing so knowingly
2) Slip that feature into the client similarly to how a sleazy developer might sneak in non-payment related stuff that Apple also objects to (egregious user tracking, phishing, etc)
3) Prepare advertisement, a social media campaign and a lawsuit based on knowing how Apple will have to react to all of this, because Apple's made its stance and rules known in advance
4) Do all of this with a holier-than-thou, we-want-our-customers-to-save-money-but-evil-Apple-won't-let-us message that they're sure to eventually move away from if they get what they want out of this
5) Simply because they know that a good portion of their customer base is impressionable, highly invested in their game and when temporarily denied access to it eager to lap up that messaging completely ignoring the fact that Epic did this, Epic's not a charity and they will increase prices again when they see that they can reasonably explain it with "increased costs of making games"
So. Thank goodness for those other developers.
#FleeFortnite
1) Ship an update with the ability to introduce a feature that breaks the App Store rules they agreed to, and doing so knowingly
2) Slip that feature into the client similarly to how a sleazy developer might sneak in non-payment related stuff that Apple also objects to (egregious user tracking, phishing, etc)
3) Prepare advertisement, a social media campaign and a lawsuit based on knowing how Apple will have to react to all of this, because Apple's made its stance and rules known in advance
4) Do all of this with a holier-than-thou, we-want-our-customers-to-save-money-but-evil-Apple-won't-let-us message that they're sure to eventually move away from if they get what they want out of this
5) Simply because they know that a good portion of their customer base is impressionable, highly invested in their game and when temporarily denied access to it eager to lap up that messaging completely ignoring the fact that Epic did this, Epic's not a charity and they will increase prices again when they see that they can reasonably explain it with "increased costs of making games"
So. Thank goodness for those other developers.
#FleeFortnite