[ksec]

I just thought one thing no one seems to have point out yet. Apple framed this as a standard practice in business.

Yes, in a Supermarket, they will advertise your product on your behave. But customer dont run to Kraft Heinz, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble or Coca Cola for refund. They go straight to the store they bought it with. Or a better analogy would be tools ( multi usage ) rather than consumables. Consumer buying a tool will still return their tools to Home Depot rather than making complain about the tools maker not doing refund. But with Software that is not the case. Nearly all software are treated as "services" by consumer whether they are charged with subscription or not. And customer will act the same if they bought a services from Walmart. Let say Disney+ or Netflix. They will go to Disney and Netflix to complain or refund, not Walmart.

I think this distinction is quite profound ( to me at least ). Because we often use the product analogy with Software and Subscription. We even have a term SaaS ( Software as Services ) when in fact nearly all software are in some way treated as services by consumers. And of course Software developer have long thought of it as services due to its constantly updating nature.

So this mismatch, between how App Store operate, how Apps are priced and how consumer behaves with software seems to be fundamentally wrong.

[Terretta]

On the contrary, the CDPR release debacle shows consumers expect the refund from the app store aka the console store front, whether Microsoft or Sony. They’re mad at CDPR, they want their money back from Microsoft or Sony. And given that noise level, Sony yanked Cyberpunk2077, just as Apple might. Or Walmart with a bad batch of ketchup.

Similarly, people buying from the app store BnL don’t go back to the app store to find the developer web site and go there to look up a support phone number to ask a human if they can please cancel by physically mailing a certified letter somewhere (how you cancel most first party subscriptions). They go to the subscriptions settings and cancel.

I’d argue that is indeed exactly like Heinz vs. Walmart or whatever.