Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app
(macrumors.com)1104 points by pier25 4 days ago
1104 points by pier25 4 days ago
I genuinely don’t know, which is why I asked. Even on mobile I only ever use the website and can see literally no benefit whatsoever to there being an app.
TLDR: user reach and convenience (or avoidance of the inconvenience artificially created by the app store companies to ensure own monopoly).
App stores are another source of distribution of the platform. Apps create another engagement channel. Apps are another way to reach more people and keep them "hooked" longer (push notifications, tighter integration with the system). Poor performance of the website-only apps is often offputting showing lower retention and engagement metrics. People don't konow how to create a web app icon on the home screen, but know how to search for apps in the appstore.
Some platforms make website-based apps harder to create and manage (in the name of the resource optimisation or security). So no background players, no face-based logins, no airplay, battery drains way faster with web based apps, no proper file storage, hard to handle guestures, no restoration of the state of the pages, etc, etc.
When inside patreon company there is a question "do we do the native app or we keep the website" there is no good argument from project manager side why not to do the app as it increases all the metrics they care about and accept future possible risk that something will change from Apple side.
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.
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%.
Apple has already been compensated in the form of $1,000-$1,500 for the phone.
This is what I've never understood about Apple's argument that they need to be compensated for the R&D and ops costs of running the App Store. They already have this! It's the developer program fee!!
As far as I can tell it wasn't even raised in the Epic case either.
The dissonance is conflating criticism of someone's fee structure with a demand that someone be disallowed from charging a fee. That's just dishonest spin.
No one thinks Apple shouldn't be allowed to make a buck. No one thinks Patreon shouldn't be allowed to make a buck.
But Patreon's fees are near-universally held to be reasonable and fair, and Apple's are some bullshit.
Why would anyone use Patreon’s app?