[bkraz]

As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support, the news is terrible: Patreon informed me that all creators must switch to a monthly subscription schedule instead of the per-creation schedule that I and many other currently use. The whole point of per-creation is that it allows me to take time off, and only charge people when I release something, thus incentivizing me, and being fair to my supporters. I'm really annoyed by this change, and will start pushing back, but if it happens as planned, I may be forced to switch to another platform, or come up with some other solution.

[AlexandrB]

Apple has quietly been one of the biggest culprits in the proliferation of subscription software. They still don't support upgrades/upgrade pricing. Subscriptions are also the easiest way to implement a software demo or trial in the App Store. Finally they use their control of the App Store to coerce anyone doing something different than monthly/yearly subscriptions into that model (as we see here).

It sucks big time.

[baby]

I really hate how the current pattern is

1. Download seemingly cool app on iOS (free with potential payments)

2. Go through a 30min quizz

3. Required to subscribe for $150/year to start using the app

It’s not free, it’s false advertising

[TheKarateKid]

Funny how UX only matters to Apple when it doesn't cost them $$

[harry8]

In the days of the ipod every single user of it I encountered had apple's UX wipe their music collection.

But maybe that was by design as they decided to call their music shop by the same name as their ipod management software. That is the essence of Apple's UX. Shiny destruction of your property. It remains so.

The UX everyone wanted was copying files onto and off the device presented as storage on any computer it was plugged in to.

[johnnyanmac]

Maybe that awful ad of Apple destroying perfectly functional instruments was more accurate than I expected.

[nomel]

They added "in app purchases" indicators in the store for this. I use it all the time. "In app purchases" on something that claims it's free is not free.

[05]

Yeah but you can’t filter on it, dark patterns at work.

[TheKarateKid]

Apple's longstanding App Store guidelines always forced a certain level of "quality" and good customer experience, yet they're now allowing apps that are the exact opposite.

Most of these apps use dark UX patterns to trick new users into scammy free trials which convert to $100+/yr subscriptions after 1-3 days. These apps also make it difficult to close out of the subscription window, or make it seem like you have to subscribe when you don't.

It's entirely contradictory to everything Apple once stood for in justifying their gatekeeper App Store experience.

Apple could easily ban these types of scammy UX patterns, but they won't because it benefits them. That's my point.

[Aeolun]

> scammy free trials which convert to $100+/yr subscriptions after 1-3 days

I’m fairly certain this is because it’s the only way of offering a trial that Apple allows?

[zombiwoof]

Yeah I hate how to get Logic Pro on my iPad I have to subscribe not purchase

[daniel_reetz]

Don't forget censorship/banning of nude images. The tumblr fiasco (among others) was their doing.

[nomel]

That's not totally true. Twitter/X is fine, in this regard. The toggle is web based, but there's no censorship once it's toggled. The large amount of age restricted content on YouTube, with nudity, is another example.

[nomel]

It appears that people aren't aware that twitters is a porn app, for many users.

Porn is allowed: https://apnews.com/article/x-twitter-musk-porn-adult-content...

And interest in porn is growing: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/twitter-crypto-pornograph...

[api]

They've certainly encouraged subscriptions but the big driver is the drive for recurring revenue, which can be valued up to 20X what one-time revenue is valued. In some cases companies with investors are instructed to not even care about non-recurring revenue since it doesn't matter. Revenue is recurring or it doesn't exist.

Recurring revenue has always been highly valued. What changed is that the Internet and modern automated payment networks have made it so much easier to implement recurring revenue models. Now everything can be a subscription and now companies that don't have subscriptions are at a massive valuation and fund raising disadvantage. The more companies figure out how to add recurring revenue, the more companies have to figure out how to add recurring revenue.

This is why your car company, appliance company, etc. is trying to get you to subscribe to something.

[johnnyanmac]

Can you imagine the hellscape Steam would be if they adopted this phlosophy? It may have fundamentally ended PC gaming as we know it. Literally throwing free money away.

>Now everything can be a subscription and now companies that don't have subscriptions are at a massive valuation and fund raising disadvantage

It won't alter this course, but given recent news I sure hope Biden can do one last kick to this stupid model. The biggest reason subscriptions do this is because so many forget to unsubscribe. An issue as old as fiat currency. discouraging recurring subscriptions could be the US's version of GDPR in terms of how utterly devastating it will be to companies.

[derefr]

> They still don't support upgrades/upgrade pricing.

What would this mean, exactly?

You can sell people a demo→full-version permanent unlock as a one-time purchase, same as you can sell DLC in a game.

And you can also have subscription tiers, where you get more features out of the higher tiers of subscriptions.

And you can, in theory, freely mix these — e.g. charging someone a subscription for the base version, and then charging them a one-time fee to unlock a specific feature.

If you want, you could even charge for app features as consumables (just like F2P games do) — where you pay to have a block of credits that you use up, or you pay for one month and then have to buy it again when it runs out.

What's the missing revenue model here?

[saratogacx]

The model is the "old school" model for software sales.

The first version you sell to a user at full price and offer a discount for upgrading (something like 40% off). It lets the customer pick when they feel the value prop is worth the cost and lets you offer a loyalty incentive to the user.

Right now the choice is "keep paying for it to keep working" or "fully price for every upgrade".

[nomad41]

I don’t exactly remember how it went but ~5 years ago Goodnotes 5 came out and they offered a “bundle” of Goodnotes 4 and 5 together at the same price of Goodnotes 5. Maybe owners of version 4 had some kind of discount on the bundle because they already owned half of it?

[zchrykng]

That isn't officially supported and is super error prone. People can end up getting charged more if things don't work perfectly.

[rdsnsca]

Bundles can be used for upgrade pricing, you put the new version up for full price (ie. $20) and and a bundle with the new and old version (ie $30, for a 50% discount on it) for those who own the old version. When you buy a bundle you don't pay for the one you own.

[gcr]

Are there any examples of apps that do that? As a consumer, I haven't ever heard of an app that offers this (e.g. goodnotes, LiquidText, MarginNote, Audulus and Things have new major releases and don't seem to do this)

[refulgentis]

Couple of the old school macOS dev houses tried this once this hack became visible and little birdies said the hack WAI. (ex. OmniGroup)

Since then, people have backed off.

If you're going to this much work to help users workaround Apple nonsense, you really care about helping them save money, and the support + refund costs of people accidentally buying the bundle with the old version they don't need is > just building out your own server-side system, versus a combinatorial explosion of bundles in the App Store that creates a confusing minefield for users.

[refulgentis]

By jumping through hoops, tying unrelated tools together, confusing users, and reaping an extra $10 you didn't want to take + support costs thereof, yes, it is possible. It is not what we expected or asked for when we started asking for this in 2007 (we = iOS devs).

[dwaite]

There are several vendors who do this, for instance 1Password and the Omni Group both do. You have an in-app purchase option that is unlocked by a previous receipt. The challenge is that Apple does not provide tools to help or guidance. They do indeed think e.g. requiring users to buy an upgrade to keep the app working on a new annual iOS version or macOS version is a bad model for users.

Panic even had an upgrade for MAS users when they released their new version of the now defunct Coda outside the MAS (for sandboxing reasons).

[pwdiscflatmajor]

FL Studio (fka FruityLoops) is an outstanding exponent of this old method (but once, free upgrades for life)

[mcguire]

Free upgrades are problematic themselves: once you've saturated your market (a good place to be, right?) you no longer have income to provide upgrades.

[lomase]

FL Studio has had free updates for +23 years and is a company with profit.

It does not look like a problem for them.

Do you have an example of a company that saturated the market with free upgrades and went down because of it?

[raybb]

What's missing is you pay for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and it's yours forever. Then when CS3 comes out you can upgrade with a nice discount.

[derefr]

Ah, alright.

There's nothing actually stopping you from doing this — it requires two things:

1. either a third-party licensing server (and thus some SSO auth system — but just require Apple's own SSO for it and it'll still be a clean-ish workflow) to share/sync the transaction status from one app to the other; or a local Group Container plus logic in each app to write the transaction statuses fetched for the given app into the group container for the other app to read

2. never charging for the app as a whole, but instead breaking your app's pricing down into a set of IAP-purchased feature entitlements (whether charged for individually, or as a bundle, the important part is that each entitlement has its own price.) Then, making the new version just a superset of the features of the old version — and so, when you're buying the old version, you're buying features A+B+C; and then when you're buying the new version (with the app being able to see whether or not you've bought the old version), new customers are buying A+B+C+D+E, while existing customers are buying D+E.

---

Note that there's an even easier way to do this (and I think this is the way Apple would prefer you do this): don't release V2 as a separate app from V1.

Instead, have V1 auto-update to a v2.0.0 release — which converts the V1 app into a launcher with an "edition" (major version) selector. Either compile in both the V1 and V2 codebase into this app, or better yet (for download/on-disk size), package separate V1 and V2 "engines" as executable DLC packages, submitted to Apple for review along with the app, downloaded on-demand when the app needs to run them.

With this approach, the app would either start up the first time still within V1, and allow/offer people the option of "seamlessly upgrading" the app to V2; or the app would start up with an "edition launcher" UI that allows people a choice. (And either way, you could offer the ability at any time to freely switch between V2 and V1, re-launching the app with the other engine enabled. Like dual-booting Operating Systems, but at the app level.)

Here, you could charge for the V2 "upgrade" ahead-of-time, before allowing the user to switch over to the V2 engine; or you could allow the user to switch between V1-fully-licensed and V2-demo modes (or even between V1-demo and V2-demo modes), where purchasing for each edition is separately available within that edition's UX.

The expectation here is that all the user's existing feature entitlements would keep working as long as they continue to use the V1 engine — as you said, the V1 engine was a one-time purchase, and so even with this edition-launcher abstraction introduced in v2.0.0 of the app, V1 itself should still keep working for them forever.

The benefit of doing this multi-editioned-shared-app approach, together with IAP feature entitlements, is that V2 can inherit some of the V1 entitlements, and then simply charge for the V2-novel entitlements. So V2 gets discounted for V1 purchasers inherently, by the fact that by buying V1, they've already bought half of the components of the V2 purchase-bundle.

[CodeWriter23]

So whereas authors used to ship a new version, and let people upgrade to that version at a discount, the author now assumes the burden with each new release of maintaining and testing V1 (that’s with all the feature flags turned off) as well as every feature flag between V1 and Vcurrent turned on. One at a time. Sounds like insanity to me.

[nomel]

> One at a time.

That would be a choice, not a requirement. It's literally a flag. You can do whatever tf you want with it. It would be trivial to have "V1 full app unlock" feature be the same as "V2 full app unlock" feature.

[CodeWriter23]

@jayd16 - it’s been a few years since I read the Apple Developer Agreement but at that time downloading code and executing it within your app was forbidden by the agreement. A sensible security safeguard IMO.

[derefr]

iSH does it. Not sure how they get away with it, but the dev is around on here so maybe they can explain.

[jayd16]

Have you actually done this? Is there a common example on the app store?

When did it become possible to download additional executable bundles on iOS?

[derefr]

Re: feature entitlements shared through a shared SSO auth backend and/or Group Container — yes, apps do this. Mostly this is in app "suites" where you can IAP a feature entitlement in one app in the suite, and the entitlement should then become available to the other apps in the suite. (I think the Omni Group apps do it? Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Re: multi-edition shared apps — I'm not sure if this has been done with the App Store in particular, but it's just a combination of things App Store apps can do (basically, moving code out into dylibs, and then marking those dylibs as On-Demand Resources.) I know that this is a common approach to supporting netplay (and especially replay of historical netplay) in competitive-eSport multiplayer game titles on Steam et al, where players need to be on the same exact version of the game engine + netcode to sync (and so those engine libs are downloaded on-demand before the match begins); and where you need an exact ABI version of the game engine to replay a netplay recording (and so that engine lib is downloaded on-demand when you go to replay the recording.)

ETA: looking more into this, I'm finding conflicting reports on whether executable-code On-Demand Resources are currently allowed on the iOS App Store: it looks like the Apple docs say no, and yet some apps (from not-bigcorp devs!) are doing it anyway and getting away with it (and have for many review cycles.) Very confusing. Maybe those devs are part of an alpha-test rollout for executable-ODR?

[jonny_eh]

Apple also takes a smaller share via subscriptions after a year (30% -> 15%).

[AmVess]

It has basically made their app store completely unusable. I am not going to manage a bunch of subs for what amounts to zero effort crapware.

[david_allison]

Not being able to set custom price points for subscriptions is also painful

[egypturnash]

Oh you too. Glad to know I'm not the only one who's really liked per-creation for years. "I pay my rent if I can do eight posts of comics pages/art/etc a month" was a good kick in the ass to keep working.

Patreon's been trying to kick everyone off of per-creation for like half the time I've been using it, so I'm sure they're pretty delighted to have this excuse to nuke that mode. I don't think I've seen a single Patreon-like that has it and I don't want it badly enough to try and cobble up something out of a few Wordpress plugins.

[throwaway290]

OG Patreon is monthly. The whole point is to support creator in tough times, not buy her stuff on discount.

[orthoxerox]

It is, but monthly subscriptions are too "sticky". There are creators that haven't released anything for several years, but they still earn thousands of dollars from their patrons, because people don't really care about saving $5 a month.

At the same time, people do care about spending an extra $5 on top of $50 they already spend on patronage, so new creators in the same field find it harder to amass a sustainable number of patrons.

[throwaway290]

Is it really a problem? Right now I am skint so every time I sub I unsub from someone else. Patreon makes it super easy. It shows how much I spend on who and I can see who was inactive for years.

[egypturnash]

Patreon launched in May 2013. I joined after one of my fans asked me to set one up so they could give me money; my first post there is in February 2014. My account is on the "founders" plan, which has Patreon taking 5% ("plus applicable fees and taxes") rather than the 8/12% (plus applicable fees and taxes) that's what they offer now. Does that qualify me for "OG Patreon" status?

Pay-per-creation mode was available then. It might have even been the only mode. I can't recall for sure. It's certainly the one I chose, if there was an option, and I haven't changed that for ten and a half years. Looking at archive.org's earliest capture of the site (June 2013), it says this:

Pledges are only charged at the beginning of each new month based on whether the artist created any content that the artist specifically labels as supported content after your pledge. Artists can, of course, post new content that doesn't count as supported content.

You'll get notified each time the Content Creator posts new content that the artist specifically labels as supported content, but you won't get charged each time. Artists can also, of course, make posts on their activity feed and even upload new content that isn't labeled as supported content. Charges are aggregated and done once at the beginning of each new month, and you can edit/cancel your patronage at any time. Additionally, you can set a max limit for how much you'll be charged, so you never need to worry about paying for too much content!

This sure makes it sound like the original model was pay-per-post. There's nothing in there about a monthly subscription. "Support me through a monthly recurring tip" existed back then via Paypal's tip jars and some creators were getting by on it but it was a much harder sell before Patreon came along.

(https://web.archive.org/web/20130608123152/http://www.patreo...)

[giancarlostoro]

The only way to put an end to this is if more people stop installing apps that are just website skins, and just use the open web instead.

[kjkjadksj]

Apps are now forcing you to use their website skin even though its damn easy to offer a mobile web alternative that doesn't squander ever precious local storage.

[giancarlostoro]

Reddit is probably the worst at this, really annoying.

[johnnyanmac]

absolutely dreadful. It is quite literally unusable to use the mobile site. I don't even know why they bother hosting it.

Only site where I simply toggle desktop. And now FF mobile can even install RES so that helps mitigate the otherwise clunky navigation (though, I have been unable to enable cloud backup. I can restore local copies though).

[VertanaNinjai]

There is also Sink-It for Reddit. It’s an open source Safari extension to make the website more usable if you need it.

[josephg]

Which apps? The only one I know about is Reddit, where the web version is crippled compared to the app. (You can’t read all the comments). But old.reddit.com works fine on mobile - even if you have to constantly zoom in and out.

[socksy]

ultimate-guitar.com is a big offender. The mobile site jams lots of things in your face to and get you to download the app (including an entire fake tab page that you can't interact with but can scroll past on iOS devices). Then on the mobile site you can't tap on any of the chords to see the fingerings (very important!).

You can if you choose to request the desktop site, but then you get an obnoxious bar going across the middle of the page blocking some of the tab.

If you fold and finally download the app, you're greeted with a 10+ page unskippable questionnaire that after you're done ends with a paid subscription call to action. If you then force close the app, and open a tab link from the browser into the app, you are finally allowed to view a tab.

[koyote]

Tiktok and Instagram don't force you to, but remind you that you really should be using the App.

There was an Australian low-cost airline (Bonza) that only allowed bookings via their app. It went under very quickly (I wonder why...).

[rswail]

Bonza went under because Qantas/Virgin maintain a lock on airport "slots" in the primary markets of Melbourne and Sydney.

That's why every day, there are flights from both airlines that are "cancelled" and everyone moved to the next flight. Qantas got so outrageous that they were selling tickets for "flights" that they knew were never going to fly.

Australia's airport and airline "markets" are monopolies (airports) combined with oligarchies (Qantas/Virgin).

Like most consumer industries in Australia, there is a natural oligarchy or regulated market size, thing supermarkets (Coles/Woolworths + Aldi/IGA), banks (the "big 4"), Fuel, Hotels/Pubs, etc.

[kjkjadksj]

Uber lets you use mobile web. You try that on lyft they text you a link to download the app. As a result a bookmark to mobile web uber lives on my phone rather than the 300mb lyft app.

[imzadi]

I don't think this is up to the consumer. The companies should just pull their apps from the Apple marketplace. If something can be a website, just be a website. Why even mess with an app at all? It's not like consumers are clamoring for these apps. Everyone I know hates that you have to have an app for everything these days.

[johnnyanmac]

>The companies should just pull their apps from the Apple marketplace. If something can be a website, just be a website. Why even mess with an app at all?

the sad reality is that mobile pretty much "solved" an issue corporations struggle with on web to this day. A closed down (i.e. no adblock), centralized (i.e. you can pay to game the platform to highlight your product), scalable system that can be easily and conveniently monetized. They don't like it, but those corps would 99/100 times take that 30% toll from Apple/Google to gatekeep the adblockers if it means they get more consistent ways to serve ads and subscriptions. That's why being open didn't change most company's decision to serve on Google Play vs an alternative store, nor on the web.

[freedomben]

Yep, and don't forget the deep analytics that they gather as well. That's a huge motivator

[xelamonster]

Yeah, though the problem with this is that from my experience with Android, the web version of Patreon is practically unusable. Not that the app is much better, they seem determined to come up with the most horrific UX anyone could imagine across all platforms, but it at least can somewhat consistently handle playing the podcasts I subscribe to without cutting out every five minutes.

[Bwass]

What do you mean, unusable? It's simple and straightforward.

[rchaud]

It's slow with tons of loading spinners.

[cesarb]

I've seen some creators on Patreon "pause" their monthly subscription when they have nothing to release on a given month, so that patrons won't be billed for that month. That could be a workaround for your use case.

[danShumway]

Do we know whether or not iOS's subscription model supports pausing?

I guess I assume Patreon would mention if it didn't.

[danpalmer]

It does not. Apple do all the billing. You have no mechanism to link up users and bills or change users billing. The only way would be to notify all subscribers to cancel their subscription, hope they do that, and then notify them all to resubscribe afterwards, which would obviously be catastrophic for subscription revenue, as well as a terrible user experience.

[danShumway]

I wonder why Patreon isn't hammering this point more if that's the case. This seems to me to be an almost bigger problem than the loss of the per-creation billing.

Not that losing per-creation billing is good, but Patreon has been threatening it for a while, and there are ways it could in theory be simulated. But this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... without continuing to charge patrons. It's a really commonly used mechanism from what I've seen, this would be a loss of a really important flexible tool for creators.

I'm not distrusting you, I just feel like I'd like to see some confirmation from Patreon before I start making accusations about it. Maybe they have some deal or know something about a future unreleased API that I don't know?

But losing the ability to pause a Patreon page would be a very, very big deal. Arguably even a bigger deal than the 30% tax, since I assume this change would affect everyone regardless of where they subscribe from. That's something that people should be talking about if it's the case.

[jug]

> Arguably even a bigger deal than the 30% tax, since I assume this change would affect everyone regardless of where they subscribe from.

I wouldn't assume this until confirmed. The way I read these news is the typical Apple scenario, where if you subscribe from the app, there's an added 30% subscription fee and a loss of all control from the subscription by Patreon, all control and all limitations handed over to Apple, all subscription cancellations, all billing complaints, everything.

But you can still have a parallel system without the fee on the web, the cannot be advertised or guided to it from the app (at least this used to be the case), but it's also as usual completely handled by the developer.

Patreon is probably removing the on-purchase pay model even on the web because it's inherently incompatible with the basic Apple model and would cause a major disconnect in what the user can expect.

But I don't think the scenario with paused subscriptions is quite the same. Patreon would simply allow them to be paused, while if subscribed with Apple, the button on the web could simply be disabled or gone, or heck, the entire subscription page on Patreon gone, with just info text "This subscription is managed from your device". I mean, many devs do it like that at least.

[throwaway290]

> this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... without continuing to charge patrons.

"I will want to withhold money the moment you go on a break" is not "patronage".

[danShumway]

Patreon does not require creators to pause payments when they go on break.

But that should obviously be a choice that is available to creators, for a variety of reasons. They might be treating Patreon more like a subscription service than a donation platform. They might have personal psychological hang-ups (read about why per-creation pricing is so popular with some creators). I would criticize Patreon if it forced creators into that decision. Forcing them out of that decision is also worth critiquing.

It ought to be a creator's choice when they do and don't charge their patrons. It is not Patreon or Apple's job to decide with that level of detail what the relationship between a creator and their fans should look like. And creators who voluntarily decide (for whatever reason) to temporarily pause charging fans are not doing anything wrong.

[jkaplowitz]

It’s bad, yes. It would be good if Patreon allowed sticking with the billing systems which Apple is forbidding, but I do understand that they may no longer be able to justify the business expense of maintaining them given the anticipated changes in usage patterns.

Practical suggestion:

Maybe you can project a certain number of releases per year, reduce that projection slightly to give yourself a margin of flexibility, announce that target to your supporters, be explicit wit them that the rate of output throughout the year will be uneven, and then charge a monthly subscription price of 1/12 of the total price for your annual target output?

Assuning a good projection would smoothly have approximately the same financial outcome for everyone as the status quo in most cases. I can think of ways in which this could be gamed, but most of those who would want to bother gaming it are probably cash-poor enough that you may not mind, or if too many people do this to preserve your financial objectives I can also think of workarounds for most of the potential abuses.

[bkraz]

Yes, it's a reasonable workaround. I believe Patreon also allows creators to "pause" their account, suspending payments for an indefinite amount of time. So, I could just keep the account paused, then unpause for a month when I make a video. Although, I believe that Patreon doesn't want the per-creation model themselves, since charging the same amount each month is simpler, and easier to project revenue, etc, so they are probably just bundling this unpopular change with the Apple announcement.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

So why is Patreon doing this if even they don't like it?

[bluGill]

Patreon doesn't have a choice. Apple is too large to give up having an iOS app - too many customers will just walk away instead of using the alternative (or so they think - but I don't blame them for not being willing to experiment - if they are right it will cost a lot of customers)

Well there is a choice, but it is questionable if suing will or will not result in any change. Even if they win in court it will be several years and millions of dollars in legal fees, and it isn't clear they will win.

[xnyan]

iOS market share is near 60% in the US and a bit over 25% worldwide. They can't afford to leave that on the table.

[Aeolun]

They can _not_ charge through iOS though. It’s a very small matter for me to navigate to the Amazon website to buy a new book, then load it up in the Kindle app.

[johnnyanmac]

I imagine they already crunched the numbers of doing the Spotify approach vs. kowtowing to Apple. Unlike Spotify and Amazon, Patreon does have non-negligible competition to consider who will take advantage of the more convenient payment.

[dannyobrien]

I don't understand why Patreon has to drop the per-creation model. Can they not just not offer that on iOS, and continue it on other platforms? (Perhaps with a "convert from susbcription to per-creation" feature online?)

[kmeisthax]

From the article:

> Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.

In other words, every Patreon creator has to be billable through iOS App Store or you get kicked off.

Someone should get the FTC or EU involved. This is beyond the pale.

[troad]

> Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.

This is truly egregious. "At risk"? This is sheer blackmail.

"Nice store you have here. It'd be a shame if anything... bad were to happen to it. A 30% cut for our legitimate businessmen's club should assure you peace of mind... "

[reddalo]

> Someone should get the FTC or EU involved.

I agree, but I also wonder why Patreon needs an iOS app.

It's 2024, you don't need an app for everything. See OnlyFans, they're doing fine even without being able to access the proprietary stores.

[mcgrath_sh]

This is speculation: for younger people, apps are the web. I think there is some age/line where on one side, your first instinct is to open the browser on your phone and navigate to a website, and on the other side of the line, you open the app store and navigate to an app.

Personally, I agree. I want better/first class mobile websites over an app. I don't want apps for most things. That said, I didn't grow up in a mobile first/mobile only era.

[baby_souffle]

> This is speculation: for younger people, apps are the web

I don’t think age is the driver. For most people, for the last decade, all software in their phone has come from the App Store. Everybody is trained to check there first. Even if you think to google it first, you’re just going to get App Store link in the top results. Company’s own site might be at the top and you’ll instinctively look for the ‘get on App Store’ badge when you click through.

Some small number of android power users are the only people that really know that downloading an app from not the App Store is possible.

[dvngnt_]

following this to its logical conclusion you would never install an app if they offered a web version which also means if you get a DM from a creator on pateron you have to load the website instead of easy access to your app drawer.

> See OnlyFans

i bet they would do even better as a native app.

also let's remember that apple goes out of their way to not support PWA in an effort to maintain control https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/15/apple-confirms-its-breakin...

[dwaite]

I don’t know if that link supports your point?

[dvngnt_]

people always say turn to webapps as an alternative to native apps but on apple for years pwa lacked feature parity

[Sakos]

It's 2024, if you want a viable business that caters to mobile users, you need an app. There are users who don't care or even prefer the web version, but we're a minority.

[mcintyre1994]

I wonder if you could argue this is comparable to Amazon allowing you to buy some things in the app but not others, like ebooks. Obviously Amazon is much bigger but I don’t see why an app shouldn’t be able to allow buying some things but not others. Especially when the limitation is from Apple’s functionality like in this case, rather than their fee like in Amazon’s.

[Aeolun]

> or disable transactions in the iOS app

This should be beyond illegal right? Other apps do this without issues.

[dwaite]

Apps in certain categories (ebooks, music, video, news) can choose to not support purchasing at all in apps, or to use in-app purchases.

Outside these categories (eg a email account as a service, group classes) you are expected to always have in app purchasing.

There have been interesting ways people have explored getting around this, but obviously Apple thinks they should be paid what they are contractually obligated.

Having control of distribution means it is easy on Apple’s side to solve disagreements. You only see it brought to lawsuit by the other side (e.g. Epic’s lost case in the US)

[jzl]

I could be wrong, but I think you’re misinterpreting it. They could remove all billing from the iOS app just like eg Audible does. But I’m guessing they don’t want to. Patreon is looking out for themselves, not their creators or subscribers.

[johnnyanmac]

Hard to say. Audible, Netflix, and Spotify have a lot more weight to throw around. Enough that even Apple can't ignore it. I can see these being backdoor deals for them specifically.

Patreon from its very model does not. A very sad exploitation of the little guy, even if this is one of the biggest little guys.

[Uvix]

User confusion - if they block users from subscribing to those creators on iOS they will inevitably have support tickets to deal with it. Hence their 16-month project to remove non-iOS-compatible plans.

[squigz]

The per-creation model isn't even offered to new Patreon accounts, or those that have switched away from it. I'm not sure why

[lathiat]

Because they've already been on the road to moving off of them for a while now (for this reason)

[squigz]

For what reason? iOS fees? I'm not sure they're related. Patreon has been pushing away the per-creation model for many years now.

[Aeolun]

Something about too much transaction fees?

[pie_flavor]

You're aggregate-charged monthly, not individually when the work is created.

[rk06]

Most likely because this feature existed on iOS before

[kragen]

hey, i answered your email about aleph last wednesday; no stress if you're answering slowly, i just wanted to check to see if it had fallen into your spam filter

unfortunately i don't think i have any other way to contact you other than email and hn comments

[stavros]

I think the platform you should switch to here is Android. This is Apple's fault, Patreon doesn't seem like it likes the changes any more than you do.

[spullara]

do you think that they can switch their customers platform? this comment doesn't make any sense at all.

[SilkRoadie]

Does the app give any benefit over the web? Asking customers to use the browser over the dedicated app doesn’t seem unreasonable.

[input_sh]

Apple forbids even mentioning alternative payment methods within the app.

[octacat]

It is patreon, creators will just ask people to use a browser to subscribe.

[zchrykng]

That will be just great when Apple finds a creator doing that during App Review and bans Patreon over it. Patreon is going to be forced into the position of policing it for Apple, I'd guess.

[Manuel_D]

I think that's changed: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/apple-lets-devs-....

> However, the rulings established that Apple's so-called "anti-steering" rules—language prohibiting developers from mentioning cheaper or alternative purchasing options that might be available outside of an app—were anticompetitive.

> Apple has updated its App Store rules to allow developers to provide external links to other payment options, technically circumventing its normal fee structure.

[jzl]

Yes but then they get to charge a commission for anyone following the link.

[frumper]

If I click my subscription on my iOS Disney+ app, it just launches a browser to manage.

[dwaite]

If you sign up for new service via the app, it does in-app purchasing.

After that you can maintain your account via the web.

[InsomniacL]

Does apple allow that?

I think there are rules about telling people not to use IOS method.

Not sure if that would extend to content displayed in the app too from creators?

[Arainach]

Take Apple out of the loop entirely.

Why does Patreon need an app? Have users go through the website. Send them updates when people post new content.

I've never used the Patreon app on either Android or iOS. I support a number of creators and I have no idea why I'd want an app. Money is taken from my account. Receipts are sent to my email. Articles from creators are sent to my email, and if they're long enough I click a link and read the full article (or view the pictures) on the website.

[lozenge]

The app's useful for audio posts. But mostly it's just an extra chance for them to make money. Push notifications, the home screen icon, etc. Most people I know, their inbox is barely functional due to the marketing emails, and they're reliant on features like Gmail's "Important" which only highlights real people, not Patreon content.

You're not the average user, and if the average user gets a billing email and hasn't bothered to read their content email, visit the site or open the app, they are more likely to end their subscription.

[dwaite]

I’ve been trying to figure this out. Just guessing since I have limited Patreon usage.

They don’t want to just be a payment middleman for creators, they want to be “sticky” like Facebook.

So they might add things like chat, media playback (with DRM), creators being able to post with notifications. Maybe you can sign up for additional private streams or even 1-on-1 sessions (like a gamer offering tutorials).

But by having an app to consume digital services, Apple says you have to provide a way to pay for services in the app (because that’s apple’s revenue model, a portion of software sales and resulting digital goods and services off of the App Store)

[abudimir]

Exactly what I do, subscribe through the web. Don't need another app on the phone. Subscribe and forget.

[johnnyanmac]

It's probably a generational divide now. For many middle/younger gen z and the upcoming Gen alpha, apps "are" the web. Not having an app to look at may as well not exist. Especially true of IOS users.

[bluGill]

Sure Apple allows it. However it is much easier to have a good UI experience with a custom app than a web app. Some people also think they must have an app for everything and so even if there is a good web experience they will demand the app anyway.

[Manuel_D]

They used to forbit it, but court cases struck down the "anti-steering rules"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/apple-lets-devs-....

[heavyset_go]

Google forces apps on the Play Store to use Google's payment methods and give them a 15% to 30% cut of revenue, as well.

You can sideload, but the duopoly exists and they're shaking 99.9% of users down for every dime they can get out of them.

[omoikane]

My understanding is that Patreon does not use Google's payment system and isn't subject to a cut of the revenue. This is why the article says "Your prices on the web and the Android app will remain completely unaffected".

[mcguire]

You are aware that you cannot purchase ebooks through the Amazon apps on Android, right?

What you say may be true today, but tomorrow is unknown territory as far as these sorts of agreements go.

[ThatPlayer]

I can purchase ebooks on my Amazon Kindle Fire that runs Amazon apps on Android fine.

I bet I would also be able to purchase ebooks on the Amazon Kindle app installed from the Amazon Appstore on my Google Pixel phone.

[zik]

Your bet would be wrong - they stopped allowing that a little while back. It's annoying.

[kmeisthax]

At least until 2025 when Google implements the exact same policy change. Every questionable hardware choice Apple does is something Android vendors or Google Play copies within a year.

Remember when Samsung made fun of Apple for removing the headphone jack?

[johnnyanmac]

unlike Apple who has managed to dodge scrutiny, Google is being reemed hard by the US courts over multiple antitrust issues. It may happen eventually, but I think the courts doing their jobs will stall such pivots. The last thing they want to do is make their store sound more like a monopoly.

[stavros]

True, but Android at least allows alternative app stores, and there are a few. Obviously it's not as easy as the native store, but if enough developers are dissatisfied, there is a way out.

[gedy]

I guess I'm having a hard time understanding why a Patreon app is even needed or wanted. ApplePay I understand.

[maxglute]

Applied Science in the wild! Your videos look expensive, does per video patreons tend to cover them?

[kevin_thibedeau]

Write to your Representative and Senator Wyden before you switch.

[tetrisgm]

Any chance we could chat about how per creation works? I'm working on a competitor. @shokuonproduct / "shokunin." On discord

[ThrowawayTestr]

If you're able, my artist friend has had a lot of success running their own site and doing their own payments through PayPal.

[bluescrn]

Everyone's heard horror stories about Paypal, though. Doesn't seem like a platform that you want to become too reliant on.

[kalleboo]

I've heard horror stories about Patreon as well. Your best bet is probably to spread your risk by being on Patreon, Ko-fi, PayPal+Web, YouTube memberships (if you do video) etc.

[johnnyanmac]

managing so many fronts with such different medium (you can host all media on patreon, only really videos on YT but also more limited videos than patreon. then you can't host at all on ko-fi), sounds like a pain both logistically and financially.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

1. Building and running your own site is a lot more work than using Patreon.

2. Now you're at PayPal's tender mercies, which... well, you do you, but I wouldn't advise it.

[underlipton]

Keep it simple, use templates.

In fact, how amazing would it be if someone who was about to embark on yet another decentralized protocol fiasco instead just released a Patreon-like template? There are other payment providers.

[johnnyanmac]

>how amazing would it be if someone who was about to embark on yet another decentralized protocol fiasco instead just released a Patreon-like template

they probably exist already (minus payment processing). Network effects take hold as usual, though. Patrons are more willing than average to jump, but I can see hesitation signing up and adding payment for a new/unknown website

and honestly all payment providers suck in some unique way. Though most of the fault lies in Visa/Mastercard. That's a monopoly we need to tackle one day.

[ryan29]

How do they deal with the taxes?

[ncr100]

Am I misunderstanding, that PayPal can workaround Apple's payment rules which Patreon is complying with?

[burnished]

You are misunderstanding, the suggestion is to do it yourself instead of using patreon.

[ncr100]

Meta:

So the negative point value, currently -1, tells me that I am asking a rhetorical question and I should have said that I'm asking a rhetorical question.

Back on topic:

I am an expert on in-app purchases circa 2020 and do know that there's no working around it unless you have a deal with Apple. Used to be my job.

Paypal or any other financial transaction entity Is all the same to Apple, the user is sending their money while using an apple hosted app, and apple wants to make sure that users don't get fleeced! So Apple taxes those transactions ostensibly to provide oversight Services.

So the only way for patreon to get around this is to not mention in their app that you can also sign up on you know patreon.com To give money, and to allow users who have signed up and sent money on patreon.com to use the iOS app.

[whimsicalism]

think p2p transactions are exempt - apple doesn’t get 30% of my venmo or zelle.

no clue why patreon doesn’t count though

[froggit]

It's not p2p. 2 transactions happen: you pay patreon, patreon pays them.

[whimsicalism]

likewise with venmo, no? who gets to decide what constitutes a transaction

[johnnyanmac]

If we're being honest, private backroom deals based on a variety of business factors and debates. Venmo is Paypal, Paypal has Musk's and Thiel's deep pockets. They can and will settle something.

There is no real line, just imaginary ones apple draws arbitrarily.

[hnuser123456]

As long as you're not using the paypal app on an apple device

[grugagag]

It seems this bypasses both Patreon and Apple.

[RockRobotRock]

You are my favorite youtuber by a mile! I appreciate that you always prioritize quality over quantity in your videos.

[trainyperson]

Does Patreon let you see what percentage of your subscribers signed up through the iOS app?

[renewiltord]

How can another platform be better about this? Wouldn’t they be subject to the same thing? Or is there some component here that is not tied to the Apple demand?

[bkraz]

That's a great question! How far does Apple's control extend into markets that are unrelated to their core business? I always prefer using mobile websites on my own android phone instead of downloading apps because of security concerns and general notification spamming, ads, and annoyances, and it seems to me this would be a great solution ie just replacing "apps" with bookmarks. For the current situation, I may look into services like Nebula, doing PayPal directly, YouTube subscriptions and donations, or setting up an online store. Or even.... sponsored videos!! (just kidding)

[xnyan]

> it seems to me this would be a great solution ie just replacing "apps" with bookmarks.

I think there are several reasons users gravitate to apps, but the biggest pain point apps mitigate is the login UX. I'd wager that you use a password manager, most people do not and cannot be convinced to do so. With an app, one can create an account and log in once, then stay logged in and never think about the password again until they get a new device, at which time the password can be reset via email and then immediately forgotten.

[inetknght]

> As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support

How long until YouTube (Google) demand "their" cut of your Patreon income? What will you do then?

[johnnyanmac]

I know what you are trying to do, but this is he host of an 800k channel. They already generate millions for youtube. Google will at best try to steer that channel to use Youtube's recent-ish dontation and memberships features.

No reason to disrupt money directly from someone they are paying; if they want to do it sneakily they simply change their payout rates and argue over that instead.

[dvngnt_]

pateron can upload an apk and bypass google's play store