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Apple to Soon Take Up to 30% Cut From All Patreon Creators in iOS App (www.macrumors.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59469059

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[–] 47 points 7 months ago (1 child)

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.

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  • [–] 36 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    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.

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