Comment on Patreon: adding Apple’s 30 percent tax is the price of staying in the App Store
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months agoBoth the Appstore and Google Play do literally nothing for you, except distribution.
I mean distribution is not “nothing”. They have to maintain the app store, and process payments, and filter (most) malicious software.
It’s just not worth anywhere near 30%, not to mention the flurry of ads all over the place.
At least with Android it’s completely possible to have a third-party app or app store and charge using their own payment processes without ever touching the Google Play store.
Apple is a whole other level of control and anti-competitiveness, and they’ve been profiting off of it for decades with no intervention in sight.
Dunno about Apple but Google does a very bad job of monitoring the Play Store. Outright malicious apps are one thing and deceiving apps are other. Latter is a very big problem. Low quality apps minced with in app purchases/subscriptions that are carbon copies of each other.
Google arguably does a worse job of curating the Play Store (sponsored results) and has a non existent support.
It also is likely costs that are having to be done anyway because of web based sales or other distribution channels. So it’s even worse that Apple and Google act like they’re providing so much when they’re literally just preventing businesses from using their existing infrastructure.
I’ll still say that when it comes to developers, Apple is a much better experience than the Google Play.
On Apple you can appeal if your app is rejected and you have an actual human on the other side to explain you what are the issues.
On the Google Play, anything goes usually, but later if your account gets flagged by their automated system, you might 1) get a generic email with no explanation and a threat that you should fix it or the app will be taken down and your account get 1 out of 3 warnings; 2) get your account simply banned without explanation, losing all your services associated with Google forever with no appeal or anything you can do; 3) have your Google account simply disabled for supposedly being “associated” with some other account that was banned.
Many of these horror stories can be found on the Android development subreddits and I suspect this is the result of the Play Store being a big target of malicious or scam apps constantly.
Well, on Google you have the choice to forego the app store altogether and distribute however you choose.
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
30% is more or less the industry standard. Whether it’s a physical store or an online store. They almost all take a 30% cut.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 2 months ago
30% is a reasonably cut for transactions that take place in your store, the main complaint I see about Apple and their store and the cut they take is that they want 30% of any money that goes through any of their devices at all, not just their app store. Relevant here, they are charging the 30% fee for people’s memberships to creators on the platform, a process that is wholly separate from Apple’s ecosystem unless the user is using apple pay to pay for it.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 2 months ago
30% is a reasonable cut for the distribution of software for which almost all revenue is marginal profit. When it’s a transaction for services that cost money to provide (like Uber or online shopping) or a transfer of money on behalf of someone else (think Venmo or PayPal or just a regular banking app), a 30% cut of the whole transaction doesn’t always make sense.
Apple (and Google and Steam) are taking a software distribution cut for a service that more closely resembles payment processing, which is usually a 1-3% fee, not a 30% fee.
4am@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Exactly what is Steam doing now? AFAIK only charges fees sales of games through the Steam platform, from which developers get a LOT of value.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I mean, that’s kinda exactly what I said, Apple taking a 30% cut of any transaction that occurs on their devices/on apps downloaded from their store makes no sense, though I will add that Patreon takes a 8 - 12% cut depending on how much support they give the creator. As far as Steam goes, to my knowledge they don’t take a cut out of in game purchases, only purchases that occur strictly on their platform. (Also I don’t think they charge everyone the 30%)
helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 months ago
I know and I don’t give a shit. It’s absurd, I don’t care who does it.