Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases

Ongoing big discussion at<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39020365">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39020365</a>

[dupe] &#x2F; Related:<p><i>Epic plans to contest Apple&#x27;s &#x27;bad-faith&#x27; compliance with ruling over App Store</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39033686">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39033686</a><p><i>US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39020365">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39020365</a>

Can anyone provide a link to context on what OP is talking about, for those who don&#x27;t know it? I don&#x27;t understand what Apple is actually doing from this tweet&#x2F;thread.<p>Are they are somehow managing to force even payment links from ordinary web sites in an ordinary web browser (Safari?) to go through them as payment processor? (How?) Or is this a new rule for app store apps (what is the new rule?) Or a new payment structure for in-app purchases? (what was the change?) Or no change, but pointing out how awful the status quo is? Other?

I mean I gotta give respect to Apple. They seem to have done the minimal technical compliance with the order. Users can make a purchase for their app outside of the App Store.<p>But at the same time they put in as much friction as they could, including reframing the charge to developer as a lead commission - and the net cost to developer is HIGHER than using Apple.<p>Of course epic is going to challenge the spirit of the implementation but this definitely makes it murkier - can you still claim a monopoly if developers can technically allow purchase outside and have a choice?<p>In any case it buys Apple more years of high rents, and possible indefinite victory (forever rents).<p>Ultimately not great for users (as any monopoly isn’t) but I don’t expect a large business to act any different. I can respect though how they approached a potentially large setback for their business.

Epic says this is about protecting small developers... which, frankly, is BS.<p>Epic charges $100 per game in their store, vs. Apple&#x27;s $99&#x2F;yr for access to the store, and the latest tools. This is pretty much a wash, unless you&#x27;re not regularly releasing games.<p>Epic charges 12% for their game store. For most developers, those earning less than $1M, Apple charges 15%. So again, pretty much a wash.<p>Epic doesn&#x27;t take a fee for DLC if games use their own payment system, but presumably takes the same 12% if you use them (it&#x27;s not at all clear)... but one of the benefits Apple gives customers is that you don&#x27;t give your payment details to everyone, decreasing the odds it gets mishandled. Again, smaller devs aren&#x27;t going to have a lot of DLC, or DLC revenue, and would have to pay someone to handle all the transactions.<p>Epic also uses its market power to direct large customers to use their store. It waives Unreal Engine fees for anyone using Epic as a payment processor, which would normally be 5% if you go over $1M in sales.... for those large customers:<p>$1M+ Using unreal:<p><pre><code> Apple would be 30%, plus 5% to Epic. + 30% DLC PC&#x2F;Steam would be 30% to steam, plus 5% to Epic. + 30% DLC PC&#x2F;Epic 12% to Epic for Epic store+Unreal. + 12% DLC </code></pre> $1M+ Not Unreal:<p><pre><code> Apple would be 30%. + 30% DLC PC&#x2F;Steam would be 30% to steam. + 30% DLC PC&#x2F;Epic 12% to Epic for Epic store. + 12% DLC </code></pre> The fight, most likely, is over these numbers. Instead of being an extra 3% for a small developer, it&#x27;s an extra 18-23% for the larger developers. A large enough percent of a large enough pie to fight for.<p>Does that make Apple evil? Epic would have you think so. But Epic also just needed to layoff a bunch of people, despite Fortnite being a money printing machine, despite their Engine royalties, and despite their own store&#x27;s fees. Sure, Apple has cash to spare, but should we really be legally forcing Apple to adopt a business model that is failing Epic itself?<p>I&#x27;m not so keen on forcing successful businesses to ruin themselves. Especially when the claimed reasons for doing so don&#x27;t seem to make any sense, and don&#x27;t benefit who they claim to benefit. This isn&#x27;t about helping all the small devs... it&#x27;s all about Epic wanting a bigger slice from the big devs. They&#x27;re just trying to get enough small devs riled up that lawmakers think this is a change they need to make.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;TimSweeneyEpic&#x2F;status&#x2F;1747408148799881390" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;TimSweeneyEpic&#x2F;status&#x2F;1747408148799881390</a>

I think what’s missing here is sideloading. The new terms apple set are ridiculous, but it’s their App Store, so whatever.<p>However, this iPhone is my device and I should be able to install whatever app I’d like on it. Without that freedom, Apple has no competition and can set their fees as high as they please.

Apple collects the rent from the apps that exist withn their walled garden. Epic employs behavioural specialists tasked in making their games addictive and coerce user into spending with micro-transactions.<p>I do not want to take a side in this fight.

Apple must allow alternate payment modes without imposing a gatekeeper tax. It must be consistent without exceptions (i.e. not just Amazon). The issue is not the gratuitous fee, it is the lack of choice.<p>iOS is more ubiquitous than macOS yet more restrictive--it cannot last. This entitlement is so restrictive -- it just seems vindictive. Apple&#x27;s market share and success means additional responsibility. The argument that it&#x27;s their App Store and therefore they can do whatever they want is a dubious defence. They owe their loyal developers more than this.

A law requiring hardware manufacturers to allow owners to run any software on their device would solve a lot of these Apple problems over time.<p>Thats the root of the problem. Apple has a monopoly on the social status associated with their devices, and leverages the monopoly in many unscrupulous and toxic ways. I consider Apple the most cynical and toxic of all the tech giants.

The economy primarily exists to benefit the consumers, not the producers. With that in mind, I should be able to run any operating system on an iPhone I bought. Apple should not be required to actively support this, put in extra work to document things or whatnot, but they should not be allowed to actively make things harder. If I got an iOS license, I should be able to install and run any application and be able to get it from where ever I want. If I use the App Store to distribute apps, then Apple should charge a reasonable amount reflecting the cost of distributing that app. If I use their payment services, then they should charge a reasonable amount reflecting the cost of that service.

Feels like Apple is really tempting fate at this point. They essentially won v. Epic (as of yesterday, SCOTUS rejected the appeal). I&#x27;m not sure why they feel so emboldened to add a 27% tax on <i>web purchases</i> as well. Completely wild, but I guess shareholder value must always go up.

Apple and Google are extracting so much wealth from the people who use and develop smartphone software it is insane.<p>I am continuously shocked at how supportive the HN community is of Apple collecting these tolls.

If it was just a tax, it&#x27;d be bad enough. But Apple&#x27;s in-app payments solution is severely lacking in terms of features and capabilities.<p>Just some of the problems:<p>* You cannot issue a partial refund.<p>* Actually, you can&#x27;t refund a customer at all. Customers have to contact Apple to request a refund and it&#x27;s entirely at their mercy of their whims.<p>* If Apple declines the refund for whatever reason, you and the customer are just screwed. Literally had to buy a gift card to give a customer so we could make them whole.<p>* You cannot offer a discount and free trial at the same time.<p>* When trying to create a different subscription group to A&#x2F;B test our pricing, we somehow got cursed with a reviewer who did not understand the concept long after it was released. New app builds with bug fixes completely unrelated were getting rejected. It took weeks of escalations before they finally relented.<p>* Promotional pricing is so frustrating to setup between Introductory Offers, Promotional Offers, and Offer Codes.<p>* You cannot generate ad-hoc pricing for anything.

The infamous 30% goes back to the time when there where no app stores and we, mainly game developers, had to publish our games thru publishers who used to take a large percent of income, 50% or higher, up to 70% I heard; in order for app stores to become competitive they set the fee to 30% which was an incredibly great deal for us! It seemed to me that the democratization of game publishing finally arrived at that point. Not trying to defend them, just telling that times change.

Apple&#x27;s fees are too high, and I also don&#x27;t find this particularly persuasive.<p>- Apple charges a ~30% fee to publish on their store. It&#x27;s a high fee! I also understand people make money there (more than on stores with lower fees).<p>- Apple also has a pretty sophisticated set of financial products you can use through your account with them. It makes sense you wouldn&#x27;t be able to use those in the same with with another payment processor.<p>- Apple also doesn&#x27;t want this to be an avenue for leaking personal details.<p>My read of the support link[1] are that you owe apple 0% of any purchased that are not made &quot;...after a link out (i.e., they tap “Continue” on the system disclosure sheet)...&quot;. Presumably, if your app is on multiple platforms, users can use another platform to buy things. It doesn&#x27;t appear that you would owe apple money for those purchases[2] though of course you must still charge the same price to every platform.<p>Fundamentally I disagree with how apple runs their iOS platform so I don&#x27;t own any devices that on it. Choosing not to own iOS devices is occasionally annoying but it doesn&#x27;t seem like a real disadvantage to me. However I also think that the concerns Apple has about their user experience (information leaks, compromises, etc) are real and that they genuinely do better than most other players.<p>I think the case that Apple must allow side-loading is much stronger than the case that all of this behavior is somehow wrong in essence. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Epic takes 5% of all revenue (over $1m). Would they drop all their objections if Apple just dropped their fees?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;storekit-external-entitlement-us&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;storekit-external-entitl...</a><p>[2] I am not a lawyer

Can Google claim a percentage share for any sales made on iOS through Chrome?

Honestly if forcing everything through Apple&#x27;s walled garden wasn&#x27;t anti-competitive enough, this move certainly makes it so.<p>What&#x27;s next - pay 30% Apple tax for purchases made through Safari?<p>I&#x27;m deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem. From phone, to computer, to home automation stuff. I have no desire to use a secondary app store. But I want that option to be be available. And there is no good reason for Apple to be charging anything extra for infrastructure they do not provide, and in fact actively discourage and fear-monger about. Come on.

Does anyone here work in the back office of a grocery chain?<p>What’s the typical markup on a gallon of milk or a frozen dinner?<p>I’d bet that Apple’s 27% isn’t as egregious as it sounds.

If it was about the commission, they should’ve sued for that, and not for the fact that they want the commission the be gone.<p>They’re only one party who was acting and sueing in bad faith and that’s epic

Go no further than to know who is tweeting it, Tim Sweeney, sue-er of Apple for taking 30% for App sales

If there was a concept of corporate death penalty, Apple would be one of my top picks for its application.

For those who see a perpetual take of 30% of your revenues (pre costs, pre taxes) as a reasonable ask: I cannot wait to see you on the other end of the pointy stick…<p>Imagine in a future not far away that car ownership has been replaced by car subscription, and all remaining 6 car manufactures decide to tell you that since you ride their fabulous IP, you must now pay a 30% surcharge on gasoline you use. What happens when you have low income and cannot afford a car?<p>Then your ISPs, then your health services, then your grocery stores, etc…<p>I think the crowd at HN is very smart for some things, but incredibly self-centered and out of touch with the broader reality on many topics. Not everyone makes hundreds on thousands of dollars on Tech jobs, not all devs sell millions of copies, and neither you will make that for the rest of your life.<p>As I said somewhere on the page, Apple owes large part of what it is today to the dev environment (Things,Devonthink, etc) which created attractive products only available on Mac. IOS or MacOs without third party apps is pretty boring.<p>Apple now has divorced developers and screaming for their share of alimony every month.