Patreon's Path to Pressure Apple
John Gruber on the whole Apple-cracking-down-on-Patreon in-app payments fiasco:
Right now Patreon is offering its creators two options for dealing with the upcoming changes in its iOS app:
* Raise prices for users who subscribe through the app by 30 percent to accommodate Apple’s cut of the transactions. (This is the default.)
* Keep prices the same and pay Apple’s fees out of the creator’s share of the transaction.
What Patreon seems to be suggesting above is that if they offered a third option—not to allow subscriptions within the iOS app, controlled by each creator for their own subscriptions—that Apple has threatened to remove the Patreon app from the App Store.
I humbly suggest Patreon go ahead with that anyway. Let’s see how many of Patreon’s creators tell Apple to bugger off. And if Apple were to respond by removing Patreon from the App Store for offering this choice, how would that not backfire spectacularly in Apple’s face? I believe it would be a positive publicity bonanza for Patreon, and for high-visibility creators on their platform, as well. And this example would be a disaster for Apple publicity-wise and in the face of growing regulatory and antitrust scrutiny, especially right here in the U.S.
Absolutely Patreon should do this. It's so obvious that they must know they should do this. I suspect it's simply fear that it would look like they were waging some sort of PR war that ultimately hurts their creators. But again, the creators are getting hurt regardless. Either they have to charge/eat more fees or Patreon does. The latter is bad for creators as well because it makes Patreon less sustainable as a business. So again, they absolutely should call Apple's bluff here.
To be clear, I don't think it's a bluff. I just think Apple is so clueless to these types of optics these days. They seem utterly incapable of thinking through second-order effects of their money grabs. That also sounds nefarious, which I'm not sure is really fair. Because I do believe that Apple believes they're being fair here. Patreon has existed in a gray zone with regard to these payments for a while, now Apple is just clarifying the situation...
Unfortunately for Apple, if Patreon does call this bluff is would also just further highlight how ridiculous Apple's fees are. No one is saying they shouldn't be able to get compensated for everything they do. Many of us are simply saying that perhaps it shouldn't be tied to what Nintendo used to make for creating physical videogame cartridges for third-parties back in the day. Give everyone a fair rate and they'll gladly pay. Well, no one gladly pays anything, but Apple really does provide value. And developers, creators, etc would love them if they cut the rate to something more about running the store – as it was once stated to be – and less about milking billions in profits to keep growing the all-important Services business.
But that's a lot easier said than done now for Apple. Can they really put this genie back in the bottle? Especially with the spectre looming of Google's pure-profit Search default payment going away...