[richrichardsson]

It could just be that the 20% Apple Tax is worth it to them as a business.

I use a "merchant of record" for my own side project, despite the roughly 15% it takes from each sale purely because they take care of all VAT collection and remittance worldwide.

Apple will also be taking care of some other little things like getting app updates to users, CDN, etc. etc. that I would need to implement myself.

Or you could be cynical and think that at some point they'll move to a subscription or IAP model later down the line once they have a bigger audience.