News recently broke that Apple is forcing Patreon to pay its 30% App Store tax for every subscription done through its iOS app or get removed from the App Store. Essentially, this means that either subscribers or creators have to swallow the costs and I suspect most creators won’t be willing to sacrifice any of the little amount most of them earn from their creative work.
While I don’t have a Patreon account (anymore) and have never had a subscriber, I can imagine the frustration that most of these people are probably feeling. Heck, it frustrates me to no end even though I don’t rely on it for an income.
I suspect this won’t go well for Apple in the EU, as the App Store has already been designated a “gatekeeper” in the Digital Markets Act and Patreon already has the right to use or link to an alternative payment system, but elsewhere, like in the US, they are fully at Apple’s mercy.
I used to be a big Apple fan, but lately, I’ve started to lose interest in the company as it keeps acting in ways that rub me the wrong way. This is just the latest example. Unfortunately, the quality of their products is still better than most which makes switching to something else difficult for me. Windows has made major improvements over the years and I dabbled with Linux for a while too, but macOS is still my favorite OS and the quality of hardware is nearly impossible to find elsewhere.
In the smartphone and tablet market, the only real alternative is Android and since I dislike Google even more, so there is nowhere else to go.
In any case, I hope the anti-trust regulators have a heyday with this and Apple is forced to place nice.
Original announcement by Patreon: https://news.patreon.com/articles/understanding-apple-requirements-for-patreon
