Apple is again cracking the whip in its much-criticized App Store, this time affecting Patreon creators and their subscribers.
Patreon was faced with the choice of either switching to Apple’s iOS in-app billing system for all iOS transactions, removing all other, third-party billing systems from the Patreon iOS app – or having the app removed from the store.
Patreon creators also must not turn off transactions on iOS.
This demand, which has a deadline of November to start getting implemented, resulted in the platform deciding to comply. The change comes after many years of Patreon being able to avoid fees on the App Store, which is considered by some observers as a case of Apple’s arbitrary treatment of different apps.
In a blog post, those behind Patreon said they felt “forced” into making a move that is not best for creators, who use the platform to earn money for their content.
And that is because of the exorbitant cuts Apple takes from the transactions: 30% from all new memberships bought in the Patreon app from November. This applies to the first year, and will then amount to 15% during each subsequent year.
Apple’s new requirement first emerged last year, and Patreon said that only new memberships bought through the iOS app will be affected. Now the question remains – who will Apple be taking this money from, creators or their subscribers?
That, Patreon said, is up to creators. The default, however, is to automatically increase prices for subscribers (in the iOS app) – but creators can still choose to part with 30% of their earnings instead.
Patreon made sure to stress that prices on Android and the web will not be affected and implicitly encouraged creators to steer their customers towards these other platforms.
Either way, Patreon said that the process of migrating all creators to the new billing system in Apple’s store is going to take 16 months, warning that this migration will favor Apple’s “timeline” rather than put what benefits creators first.
