Why does Apple feel they deserve a 30% cut? In cases like this, Apple aren’t providing any value at all.
- Apple aren’t providing the content - the creator is.
- Apple aren’t providing a platform for the content - Patreon is.
- Apple aren’t providing a platform for discovery - people aren’t finding Patreon creators solely via Apple products.
Sure, Apple are providing a payments platform, but why do they deserve 10x what Stripe charges?
It’s just platform-milking, just like Meetup.com’s latest antics; there isn’t deep analysis needed to everything, haha. “Capitalism” is totally a legitimate answer despite being just one word.
Meetup is now owned by Bending Spoons, who have also enshittified wetransfer, Evernote, eventbrite, AOL, vimeo. They buy decent products that never exploded to ipo status, fire everyone and milk the rest for whatever they can charge.
Ironic that they named themselves on a plot about breaking out of a cycle of control, classic Palantir or Anduril vibes too of like “haha movies good where stonks”
Why does one company need to own meetup and eventbrite?
Is that not a monopoly? How does it not violate any anti-trust laws?
Edit to add: how long before we see a fediverse events app?
There is one, Mobilizon
Thank you!
You got a link to what meetup has been up to?
No, but I used to be more active until I saw that they started to increasingly prevent you from talking to other participants, and even seeing who other people are (can’t even tell gender or anything) unless you paid for their higher tier. I literally saw it get added out of the blue after years of no such restrictions, and they’ve only dug deeper and deeper. I couldn’t even connect with someone with whom I met just because I didn’t attempt to get their number immediately on the spot.
Thank you. I havent used meetup in 10 or so years. Cant remember paid features then. People also had a profile, with a picture, so as you could see interests and groups they were part of, there was also a message board for the group and messaging members wasnt an issue. Sad to see what its become.
Yeah, we can no longer msg other participants without paying. I guess they’ve picked up on it having dating potential since it has a “Single” designation so it may get added to Match’s ever-growing portfolio down the years, haha.
I, too, am interested in hearing about these supposed shenanigans.
I dunno, I left a couple years ago after they stopped providing .ics, started spamming our members that we were paying for, and then refused to provide us with the emails of our members.
Just join a group, and you’ll see. It’s so goddamn scummy and nickel/diming.
They were sued by Epic Games for the same shit and Epic won on one count which allows them to put links to alternative payment methods and go around Apple.
So couldn’t patreon just argue in court that this precedent was already set with epic?
That is how case law works, yes.
I’m just wondering then why Apple would even push this if a president was already set with Epic. What a bunch of greedy corporate bastards.
Expecting Patreon to not want to bother fighting them over it, and they are correct in that assumption.
On Wednesday, Patreon said Apple has renewed its requirement that all Patreon creators must move to subscription billing. The deadline to do so is November 1, 2026.
Edit, adding my source: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/patreon-creators-have-to-switch-to-subscription-billing-by-november-thanks-to-apple-203759852.html
I’m not a lawyer but I think they could.
They provide the payment system. They also mandate it.
If you subscribe on the website you don’t have to pay the extra. It’s only for subscriptions initiated via the app
An app you can only get via the Apple store, mandated by Apple?
Most likely the app exists just because people don’t know how to type patreon.com into the browser anymore
Full functionality is available on the web AFAIK. And if you subscribe on the web, there’s no Apple cut, but you can still use the app to see said content.
It’s an inconvenience, but a super easy one to get past and not exclusive to Patreon so a trick any Apple users should know anyway if they enjoy paying subscriptions for things (Netflix, Spotify, whatever)
I too assume the Patreon App doesn’t do anything that cannot be done on their web page. I can imagine there are good dev reasons but also bad incentives to make it an app.
I am biased against Apple as I like being the one in control of my hardware/software… but is it a stretch to say Apple influence their users to use apps instead of web pages (so they can rent-seek a cut)?
Your opinion of Apple is generally valid, but as an Apple user for the last few years, I’ve never actually seen Apple push me to install an app. It’s always the website itself saying “it’s even better in the app!” or something.
Yeah. But why would you use the app? I personally didn’t know there even was an app.
Maybe it offers something better than on whatever web browser Apple mandates, or maybe no reason but user preference.
There’s no way that the Patreon app isn’t more than a dolled up web view. If people make stupid decisions I guess the fallout is on them.
Sadly the fallout is usually on everyone - eventually companies will copy a shady practice as it’s been shown they can get away with it… until no other option for the users exists. It falls on the technologically literate to call out when others are being mistreated or they can suffer too.
No, the fallout is on creators.
I have the Android app, but I can download podcast episodes on WiFi to save on mobile data. That’s as good a reason as any to use the app.
You could also use any other podcast app.
deleted by creator
PWAs aren’t great on iPhone… They intentionally limit some functionality to push people towards the App Store.
Some people want everything as apps for some reason.
Deserving is irrelevant under Capitalism. It’s only whether they can get away with it or not?
We have a winner
Because apple is a “premium” product, so you have to pay a “premium” fee for normal stuff so it feels like you’re using “premium” services
But you’re getting literally the same Patreon content.
But you’re paying more, so it’s “premium” content, clearly.
This sums the problem up fairly nicely I think. I do wonder with Apple being a gatekeeper by EUs own definition and unfair sales terms supposed to be history with the Digital Markets Act in place this can’t go through, right!!! at least not in the EU… assuming they do their job.
gotta get the money to bribe trump somehow
Just pass on the cost of the corruption to the consumer, as usual. It’s the Corruption Tax.
Where else would it come from? 🤷♂️
It’s not about what they deserve, it’s about what they want.
I suspect this has more to do with closing a loophole than going after Patreon and only Patreon.
People don’t have to subscribe through the app. and Patreon don’t have to offer that functionality in the App. Apple don’t have Patreon locked in to their platform.
Lack of competition. No other app store is allowed to operate on Apple devices. They have a monopoly, which is the only reason they can charge as much as they do
Sure, Apple are providing a payments platform, but why do they deserve 10x what Stripe charges?
I don’t believe that 30% cut includes payment processing. That’s an additional fee
Sad to think about how little creators actually get at the end of the day. Example of a $100 donation/subscription:
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Apple takes 30%
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Card companies take ~4%
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Patreon takes 10%
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Taxes take another big chunk
After all that a the creator would have, what, $40?
No other app store is allowed to operate on Apple devices
That’s only true outside of Europe. In the EU, they were forced to allow third-party app stores. The US government doesn’t have the guts to do that, since they focus more on the needs/wants of companies, whereas the EU is really focused on consumer rights.
- Card companies take ~4%
- Patreon takes 10%
Does Patreon’s cut not include payment processing?
The other thing that’s ridiculous in the USA is how much credit card processing costs. Stripe is around 3%, while in countries it can be half of that (in Australia, it’s commonly around 1% for debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards).
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Apple also gets money from developers who use their platform already. That should be it.
Apple will already bully small developers off their platform while giving bigger companies first-class treatment.
This is THE way that Apple gets any revenue from the enormous and highly successful app platform and ecosystem they created. They say “go nuts, make money on our platform, but share some with us in exchange for our maintaining that platform.” This is reasonable. Apple is providing a service to Patreon, and access to their tremendous user base. That ain’t nothing.
I agree that subjecting creator donations to the 30% is about the shittiest use case for this and I wish they would make an exception. But your post about how Apple is doing absolutely nothing here is garbage.
Apple is doing nothing in this particular case, not in general. There’s cases where the 30% is more justified.
Oh is there some case where Apple is creating the content inside the app??? Do tell.
I meant more if people wouldn’t have found your app without Apple. In that case, they’re essentially handling marketing for you.
Being in the AppStore gives you access to a lot of people. I don’t feel it’s at all relevant whether you happen to also have other exposure elsewhere. Apple charges you for the exposure you get from them, period. If you don’t want to pay for it, because you’re so successful on other channels, just don’t. Don’t have an iOS app. But for years we’ve had people who want an iOS app but also want to complain about sharing what they make from it. They still make too much to be willing to pull their app, but they complain anyway: because who doesn’t want higher margins.
It’s one way but not the only way. They make money from developers before they even write a single line of code, every year.
Why does Apple feel they deserve a 30% cut?
Because they can. Time and time again, useful idiots have proven their dipshittery by sucking off the people taking them for a ride.
A main tenant of business decisions is to fuck over your customers as hard as they’re willing to be fucked. Since nobody has any standards these days, corporations make a killing.
I hope Patreon will just switch off the ability to pay through the iOS app, along with a nice fuck you-message to Apple that pops up when you first open the app
Last time this came up Patreon simply allowed the creators to charge the commission directly on top of the price for non apple users, or eat the 30% loss. So everyone not using iOS would pay, say, $5/month, iOS users would pay $5+30%. Hope they retain that option.
That’s actually a good solution
Is it? Previously this was considered tips
Now it’s 30% for what? Running a payment gateway and hiding an unsubscribe button deep in the App Store UI.
Competitively payment gateways charge 1-3%, but when you lock down a platform you can charge 10x that.
Yeah, I remember cause my Patreon account asked me what I wanted to do about apple trying to steal my money
p.s. I never push Patreon so have no subs lol
It’s logical but it probably scares away some customers. That’s why the “just eat it” option exists. iOS gives you access to an enormous market and payments are slick and easy. Creators may want $5 but if they can get 30% less from 500% more people, it’s still a good business for them. There’s no strict reason why they must obsess over taking 100% of the sticker price. There are a million examples of businesses who are willing to accept a discount for high volume business.
Not that good, the backlash was immense and if I remember right, people were dropping patreon subs over it.
EDIT: I might also not be remembering right. The thing I’m thinking of was an additional fee regardless of what platform you used to access Patreon.
Ya a few apps already do this. YouTube premium does for sure and I have heard a few others doing so.
Your math is wrong. If you want the creator to still get $5 with apple stealing 30% you would need to pay ~43% extra.
$5/0.7 = $7.14
1/0.7 = 1.42857
I don’t remember the math, there was a button to charge apple users more so we got what we were supposed to
It’s against App Store rules to inform your customers they’re being fucked by Apple in any way. If you do, they’ll take it down.
Isn’t it against the law in many places to charge customers without providing a breakdown of what they’re being charged with?
Not that I’m aware of.
Ok…and?
And…they probably don’t want their app delisted?
It reminds me of gas stations that only accept ATM cards and not credit cards, because they don’t want to lose the 3% that credit card companies take per transaction. They’re trying not to lose that 3%, but it will inconvenience some customers and lose them some business. That could easily be worse than 3%.
So yes Patreon could say “go find a laptop and enter your credit card number in our web page” but there are people who won’t do all that because they expect to be able to pay with one tap. And businesses are on the AppStore because that great payment experience makes it super easy for them to convert customers.
It’s just not as straightforward as saying “fuck you Apple, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
I was actually curious how this currently works as I’ve never used the Patreon app, so thanks for that. I’m sure it’s a nice convenience to be able to transact through the app, but not 30% passive Apple income levels of nice. It’s too bad they are stuck in their flat-rate commission model, because alienating third-party developers and businesses in this manner will kill their ecosystem.
Can any current creators on Patreon provide some insight into how the revenue streams break down between the iOS/Android app platforms versus the website? What impact do you foresee if instead of a payment option in the app it simply directs you to the website?
That would be nice, but when Apple says “jump,” all the other businesses ask “how high?”
The world is full of morons with more money than sense.
That’s how the system works. You don’t expect Walmart to not get a commission when you sell something at their store.
30% is reasonable. DEAL WITH IT.
Don’t like it? Make your own phone and platform.
Opening up the comments on macrumors never disappoints me :)
its also not how it works… at all. walmart would buy wholesale from a supplier not directly from the seller
Apple is reselling services, just like Walmart wholesales products, clearly
See? Apple users are as dumb as a sack of diapers and deserve to be taken advantage of accordingly.
What exactly does Apple think that they’re brining to the equation in order to deserve that 30? Is it simply that they’re hosting an app on their store, so therefore they’re entitled to a cut?
So if I write a novel, and get it published, Microsoft can say "We deserve 30% because you used our product to produce your product?
I’m so fucking tired of corporations. It’s well past guillotine-o-clock.
They’re bringing the apple tax to the table
It’s a holdover from retail where had to physically hold your product and had limited space.
Now, the shareholders demand even more money and Apple has complete control on the OS and they are signaling that you can’t do shit and they will take whatever they want.
They can fight anyone in courts, and as long as the laws have no teeth, they will get away with it.
What exactly does Apple think that they’re brining to the equation in order to deserve that 30?
Apple users are some of the dumbest people on the planet. Most of them will gleefully support paying more to make the company richer.
Why isn’t Apple trying to take 30% of all purchases through the Amazon app? Or eBay? Or your local grocery delivery? It’s the same exact thing. Such a stupid greedy fucking attempt
Because Patreon creators can’t afford to sue them
funny thing they are refugees from YouTube when they started to demand more percentage of their ad revenue. since then they rely on brand deal and promotions directly from companies.
Next they’ll take 30% on every transaction through my banking app.
I think they’re trying to kill Patreon for some reason. Maybe they’ll launch their own Patreon competitor? Maybe they noticed developers were giving away iOS apps and getting crowdfunded on Patreon?
Iirc it has to do with “monthly subscriptions” and they are arguing that Patreon is a monthly subscription and those get charged at the higher amount.
It’s why subscribing to YouTube premium within iOS app costs more because Google just makes up the difference that way.
Not that’s it’s right but it’s really debatable if Patreon should be considered a monthly subscription the same way streaming services are.
It’s why subscribing to YouTube premium within iOS app costs more because Google just makes up the difference that way.
I wish more businesses would do this. If a middleman is taking a cut, make it crystal clear to your customers.
This is my biggest gripe with Steam, for example. Valve can do 30% if they want, but dictating minimum prices on other stores that have nothing to do with Steam is just monopolistic.
They learned it by watching Amazon.
It’s not just monthly! Some creators let’s you pay when they release something. I’ve seen it a lot on certain audio dramas.
I could be wrong but I think this change forces everyone to use subscription only, not per X.
Oh shit…
Yeah, it’s certainly not the same thing. The creators set the terms as they please.
I fucking hate mega corps. It’s never fucking enough… Ever… Apple has more money than some countries yet these assholes want ever more…
Tax all these assholes into oblivion!
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” – Karl Marx
I reserve the right to hate apple regardless, thank you.
I agree, but don’t let it distract you from how much capitalism sucks balls comrade
The game is made up of dipshit players mostly working against their own interests.
Hey, the poor billionaire CEOs are under a bunch of pressure to ensure the company sticks to its infinite growth schedule.
If I was on Patreon I’d tell them to pull the app. Fuck em they have a website.
Right? You’d think Patreon would throw their weight against Apple, as this is clearly not in their best interest. Threaten to pull the app, and if Apple follows through, they get nothing. Alternatively, move payments entirely outside of the app and force Apple to either do something which is guaranteed to be extremely unpopular, or call their bluff. But they won’t do these things or even try to negotiate Apple’s cut.
Apple may appear to swing the biggest dick here, but I am so disgusted by these weak companies just immediately bending over without a fight.
As always, it’s the creators who will be faced with hardship, but neither entity seems to give a shit.
Is It better for patreon to lose 30% of income from Apple pay, or to have Apple users not being able to pay unless they open the webpage and pay from there? Is it better for them to remove the app altogether and have users on Apple forced to use it through the website?
I’d imagine they’d lose quite a bit of subscriptions if they did that. Is that more or less than 30% is something I don’t know.
They could go on the offensive with messaging and get subscribers to apply pressure on Apple to keep things the same… Would it work? Probably not, but it might get some of the Apple users onside.
Is it better for them to remove the app altogether and have users on Apple forced to use it through the website?
Yes. Clearly yes, for everyone. This sort of shit only continues because people don’t do that.
I would imagine this would lead to having less users. Or people that use it less. It would also make the experience for users worse. As such it would lead to less subscriptions. It is not clear to me that this would be better. I’m not sure on whether it would be worse, but I doubt it’d be better for everyone.
And there goes your engagement.
Apples got them, and Apple knows it.
Conversely, Apple is nothing but an overpriced burner phone without the apps. No one is buying it for safari and iTunes.
You can already pay on the website. If you pay through Apple Pay and therefore pay the extra 30%, that’s kinda on you at this point.
Cunt move by Apple, but the in-app purchase payment processing going through apple only rule has been there for a long ass time, Patreon got pretty lucky that they were given so much leeway for so long.
the patreon influencers just need to warn to pay through the website.
Tim Cook needs more money to forge golden offerings for his good pal Donald trump.
It’s wild that Steam is getting a class action lawsuit for charging 30% right now, and Apple doing shit like this at the same percentage and legally is getting a free pass.
I’ll throw a hat in the ring here. It’s because Steam has a grip on the gaming market that others want instead of them. That’s it, they want that money instead of Valve. Apple is getting a pass on this because it’s just fucking over the common guy which businesses couldn’t care less about.
But Valve doesn’t have a monopoly on PC games. You can sell your own game, or sell through GOG. On iPhone, Apple has the monopoly and they abuse it.
I was trying to avoid the monopoly complaint because it’s bogus for the reason you said. The truth, Valve has a massive market share and people are very used to Steam, tied to it in many cases. Other publishers tried to set out on their own with their own store fronts and most of those have utterly failed. Even Epic still sells their games on Steam. It’s a powerful market with a lot of brand loyalty that those companies really do want themselves.
Fair.
Other than the “not actually a monopoly” argument, I think it’s important that Steam has that marketshare because they add value. They have a stranglehold on the market similar to the way BarCodes do. You don’t have to register your product with the bar code authority, but it will sure make your product more accessible to more people.
And that’s before cloud saves, achievements, patching infrastructure, community forums, game recording/streaming, and other stuff built into the Steam client/API.
Whether that’s worth a blanket 30% is absolutely a conversation worth having. Maybe it should be a sliding / bracketed scale depending on revenue or units sold or something. But like you said, the big lawsuits are coming from competitors, not smaller developers.
I’d welcome actual, legitimate competition to Steam. That means it has to be as good if not BETTER than Steam in some ways. Epic, Apple, EA, Ubisoft, etc, sure as hell did not deliver. If anything it caused market segmentation and segregation.
True, but nobody is bound by it. There are other ways to sell on PC, there are no other ways to sell on iPhone. And games bought elsewhere will work just fine on a PC that has Steam installed. Anyone can leave at any time, or buy from anywhere. The only way to do that on iPhone is to switch your entire phone with Android. Apple’s position on the iPhone is far more controlling and monopolistic than Steam’s on PC.
The Steam tax might be too steep as well, but these are not identical situations. It’s far easier to avoid Steam if you don’t want it. I prefer to buy from GOG, and only buy from Steam when it’s cheaper or not available on GOG.
Huh? It’s the businesses that will suffer from that 30% tax. It’s like suddenly seeing your Netflix subscription being more expensive and that triggers this “do I even need it anymore?” evaluation
If it costs 13€ to support a 10€ Patreon pledge, then how do you expect the company to cover for that? Paying the creator less? Still, that will spawn competition, which again hurts the business
Just nitpicking, but if the usual price is 10€ and you want to offload the 30% tax to the consumers, pretty sure the maths should be 10/(0.7) ≈ 14.29€
Honestly was just trying to show a point, math itself was secondary, my bad
Huh? It’s the businesses that will suffer from that 30% tax. It’s like suddenly seeing your Netflix subscription being more expensive and that triggers this “do I even need it anymore?” evaluation
Has been this way for a long time. You pay through Apple, you pay more. You pay on the website, you pay the regular fee.
If it costs 13€ to support a 10€ Patreon pledge, then how do you expect the company to cover for that? Paying the creator less? Still, that will spawn competition, which again hurts the business
The creators are the ones who choose how they handle this. Either charge their 10€ tier as ~ 14.29€ or receive 7€ instead of 10€ when it comes to Apple users.
The businesses ain’t gonna suffer shit.
Right, but Valve is actually providing the service and infrastructure. Apple is not.
They are, I’m not arguing against Valve or for Apple. I’m explaining that business people want moar money and don’t like it when someone else makes it when they could.
Just crank all iOS user payments up by 30%, explain why, and let nature sort itself out.
Apple doesn’t allow this - they expect your price to be the same everywhere or they’ll remove the app from their store or decline version updates. There have historically been a few high profile exceptions privately negotiated, and I think they were forced to relax this in the last year or two, but here they are again trying to claw away money they did literally nothing to earn.
I have an app which reduces the quality of the app for apple users to force them to subscribe more than Android users.
The price is the same, but on android there’s no limit to the number of saves you can keep whereas Apple has a limit of 5 and you need to Subscribe at $30/year to unlock more saves.
You’re not correct on the “same price” thing. Yes, Apple declined version updates, but it’s because they don’t want apps to tell the user to go to the website, they don’t care about a price match.
You’re definitely right about them prohibiting devs from pointing to a web browser to subscribe. They can’t link, can’t even use language that explains WHY you can’t subscribe in the app (if the dev decides to forego using Apples payment system entirely). I think that THIS was what Apple recently was forced by a judge to relax, after the Apple v Epic case.
I must have been conflating the policy that they ABSOLUTELY did have (but only til 2011) and the outside links issue. Hughes Hubbard
Under the February rules, if developers wanted to use content purchased outside of the app, they also had to offer the content for in-app purchase and it had to be offered at the same price or less than it was offered elsewhere, despite the fact that Apple takes a 30% cut.
Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the “same price or less than it is offered outside the app”.
That’s interesting, TIL that they used to be even worse than they are today. Thanks!
It’s hard to believe, I know. 😅
Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, or absorb the fee themselves, keeping prices the same across platforms.
It’s already an option and if you read the article, only 4% are still on the legacy billing system (no Apple tax at all)
iOS users using a browser don’t pay the Apple Tax. And the only reason to pay through the app is if you specifically want to use Apple Pay (e.g to pay with your phone bill instead of your credit card).
At this point it’s a “stupid tax” more than anything.
Small clarification. Apple Pay is not really paying with your phone bill. I think you can but most users just have their credit card or debit card linked.
That’s why I used e.g instead of i.e :) That’s one use case for Apple Pay that you can’t get from the website. Another would be that you don’t share your card details with whoever Patreon’s payment processor is - which might make sense if you trust Apple more than some particular processor
They would all be screaming shut up and take my money.
Think. Of. The. Shareholders.
No
I’m an Apple shareholder and think this is a great way to lose engagement and revenue
Do you have enough shares for your vote to mean anything?
Willing to sell those shares?
Why? Haven’t you noticed the apple userbase is filled with morons who are proud to make rich people richer?
Terribly need degoogled android to become popular and/or a normal Linux distribution phone to become popular so that normal Linux market share couldn’t be ignored
New Jolla Phone will start shipping in 2026 H1
Is this one fully open source? Or is it still “well open source when we can”?
I don’t know. Are there some parts that have been closed when they should have been open?
I had no idea Apple was so desperate for money
3.78 Trillion dollar market cap. You don’t get to that valuation by being generous to your customers. Apple is as capitalist as any of them. They’re just wrapped in shiny marketing. Now only if their fans understood that.
One way, or another, that revenue stream will go to shit, they’re just doing a smash and grab while they can.
That’s what chasing infinite growth does to a corporation. Things are going to get way worse before the collapse.
So, all business is becoming a protection racket?
Gotta love walled gardens! /s
Gotta recoup all those fascist donations
