Patreon Should Consider Calling Apple on Its Threats

I neglected to call this paragraph out yesterday in my first link to this announcement from Patreon:

Patreon is home to an incredible range of creators, all with unique circumstances and billing needs. Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patreon’s subscription billing model. 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.

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.

From the perspective of creators, this clearly ought to be an option. They don’t want to charge their fans 30 percent extra just to pad Apple’s bottom line. They don’t want to earn less money themselves. Thus, they might not want to participate in App Store in-app payments at all. How is that not a perfectly reasonable choice for Patreon to offer and for some of its creators to make? And then just put right there in the app that this creator’s subscriptions are only available on the web. Dare Apple to strike that down on the anti-steering grounds that are in the bullseye of regulators around the world.

Patreon, with an army of devoted creator fans on its side, should call Apple on this bluff. I don’t think they could lose.

★ Tuesday, 13 August 2024