After Apple's threats, Patreon memberships via its iOS app will be subject to Apple's 30% fee from November 2024; creators must switch to subscription billing
if you're paying with iPhone Hamish McKenzie / On Substack : The price of payments — Today, Patreon is in the unenviable position of explaining to creators … Ashley King / Digital Music News : The ‘Apple Tax’ Hits Patreon—New Payment Options for iOS to Cover 30% Fee Matt Birchler / Birchtree : Apple gets its pound of flesh from struggling creators John Gruber / Daring Fireball : Patreon Had Spent a Decade in an App Store Gray Zone Sarah Fielding / Engadget : Patreon will have to use Apple's in-app purchase system or be removed from the App Store Kirk / Geek News Central Podcast : Apple's Strong-Arms Patreon - Creators Lose #1760 Thomas Claburn / The Register : Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS Thom Holwerda / OSnews : Apple forces Patreon to charge Patreons 30% tax, or have its iOS application banned from the App Store John Voorhees / MacStories : Patreon Lays Out How It Will Deal with Apple's Insistence That It Use App Store In-App Purchases Mudit Dube / NewsBytes : Use in-app billing system or face ban, Apple warns Patreon Dean Simons / The Beat : Apple announces they will take a 30% chunk of Patreon revenue Jean Leon / Android Headlines : New Patreon memberships will become more expensive on iOS Kaya Yurieff / The Information : Patreon Says It Must Use Apple's Payment System Or Risk Removal Michael Simon / Macworld : Patreon warns creators: Get ready to pay Apple's 30% tax Michael Tsai / mjtsai.com : Apple Going After Patreon — Sarah Perez (MacRumors, Hacker News, Slashdot): Nick Heer / Pixel Envy : Patreon's iOS App Will (Now) Be Forced to Use In-App Purchasing Instead of Its Safari-Based System Usman Qureshi / iPhone in Canada Blog : Patreon Creators Brace for Apple's 30% In-App Purchase Fee José Adorno / BGR : Apple will make Patreon pay 30% App Store fee for new memberships Jessica Bursztynsky / Fast Company : Apple's 30% App Store fee will soon hit Patreon subscriptions PYMNTS.com : Apple Requiring Patreon to Switch to In-App Purchase System Ed Hardy / Cult of Mac : Patreon iPhone app forced to charge Apple's 30% App Store fee William Gallagher / AppleInsider : Apple forces Patreon to pay 30% of new memberships sold through iOS Omar Sohail / Wccftech : Patreon Says That Apple Is Now Forcing It To Pay A 30 Percent Cut On All In-App Purchases And New Memberships, Putting Creators In Trouble Devesh Beri / The Mac Observer : Patreon Creators to Lose 30% of Revenue Due to Apple's In-App Purchase Fees Threads: Anuj Ahooja / @quillmatiq : Apple has decided that it also wants to extort independent creators now. — https://news.patreon.com/... Mastodon: Casey Liss / @caseyliss@mastodon.social : This is so gross. 👎🏻 × ∞ — When is Apple going to realize that rent-seeking anywhere and everywhere is not only a bad look, but will get them regulated straight to hell? — (And at this point, it's more than deserved. Bring it on.) — https://news.patreon.com/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : The dynamics of the Patreon thing are actually *incredible*. Apple, taking 30%, will be making effectively 6x as much as *Patreon* will on every transaction for creators who are on the grandfather plan. Whatever value Apple brings, does anybody think it's *six times* the developer it's stealing from? … Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Apple has informed Patreon that it will be kicked out of the App Store unless it pays the 30% tax for all donations. — Patreon has started a migration process that will take until November 2025 to transition all creators to the Apple billing system and making less money. — https://techcrunch.com/... … Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : “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.” Matt Birchler / @matt@isfeeling.social : Apple gets its pound of flesh from struggling creators https://birchtree.me/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : If Apple isn't stopped, there will come a point where Apple slaps a 30% tax on all VISA transactions made on iOS (unless you use Apple Pay, of course!) @marioguzman@mastodon.social : Apple is increasingly leaving a horrible, disgusting, vile taste in my mouth with all their cheap money grabs. It's practically predatory. — Apple was an American Success Story, the underdog... now they're just the bully. … @janl@narrativ.es : Maybe the Apple/Patreon thing finally gets us enough momentum for a cross-industry “You Don't Need an App for That” campaign? @thomholwerda@exquisite.social : I have no contracts, agreements, or business with Apple. I do not use Apple products, do not rely on any of their services or tools. Yet, because of their illegal rent-seeking and predatory behaviours, even I have to deal with their bullshit because Apple is forcing Patreon to change its billing system. … Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : Patreon has been around for a good ten years on iOS. Ten years in, Apple has come to them and demanded 30% of all transactional revenue in their app. — If you in the EU had left the App Store and were offering your app in an Alternative Marketplace and using Patreon as the monetization behind it … Jeff Jarvis / @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social : Apple are *not* the good guys. — Patreon: adding Apple's 30 percent tax is the price of staying in the App Store — https://www.theverge.com/... @jsnell@zeppelin.flights : money money money money — who takes all the money — it's Apple — https://mastodon.macstories.net/ ... Matt Haughey / @mathowie@xoxo.zone : I signed up to all my Patreon subscriptions on their website years ago. They don't /need/ an iOS app. I never use the iOS app. I've tried it but it offers nothing and takes 30%. — Just go all-in on your website, Patreon. Tell Apple to fuck off. Let the open web win again. Robin Daugherty / @robnich@mastodon.social : @stroughtonsmith I've worked with a number of people that left Apple because of Phil Schiller. He's been driving out good people for decades. Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : Some multimillionaire VP at Apple has decided that the best thing for the company, one of the biggest in the world, to do is introduce a new 30% tax on struggling artists and creators who have no business or professional relationship with it in the first place @viticci@mastodon.macstories.net : Is there any company more out of touch with creatives right now than Apple? — It feels incredibly weird to say this, but it sadly is true. Asking for 30% from Patreon subscriptions - in this climate - is garbage. — Read the room. — https://wavelengths.online/... @viticci@mastodon.macstories.net : the sad irony here is that Applebot-Extended has likely already crawled without upfront permission the public previews of those Patreon posts to train AI 🙃🙃🙃 Khaos Tian / @khaost@mastodon.tz.is : @viticci Phil gotta figure out a way to keep service growth now that $20B from Google is going away 🙃 Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : There are folks who still, to this day, won't touch Microsoft products because of Microsoft's behavior in the 90s — nearly 30 years later. People have long memories. Apple today makes 90s Microsoft look like a saint Jesse Squires / @jsq@mastodon.social : Apple be like — [image] Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : I'm going to guess I'm not the only person who has been privately receiving ‘#firephil’ messages from Apple folk for the past year. Maybe we should stop being private about it. Not everybody at Apple reflects its revolting conduct, and they are as angry as us about it Rich Felker / @dalias@hachyderm.io : @carnage4life So utterly stupid that they ever entered App Store. It's completely unrelated to their purpose and was bound to screw over them, creators, and patrons. Justin Bianco / @ambulephabus@mastodon.social : The most disgusting part here to me is the “offer in-app purchases or we'll boot you” threat. If Apple's fees are untenable you can't continue to offer an app that doesn't sell anything? But only if your company's revenue gives Apple execs dollar signs in their eyeballs? Atrocious. … Craig Hockenberry / @chockenberry@mastodon.social : When you start seeking rent on the livelihood of artists, I don't think you get to claim you work at the intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts anymore. — https://news.patreon.com/... @rene@social.fouquet.me : Someone at Apple must have an Apple Intelligence powered list, titled “disgusting things that we can do to our developers that raise our shareholder value” and they keep picking one item every week to keep the flow going. Kyle Howells / @iKyle@mastodon.social : According to Apple's logic they should be able to tax every single digital transacation that happens on or through any of their devices. — Except in 2024, the entire world runs on computers! — Apple wants to demand a global tax on all transactions ever made by anyone. — https://mastodon.social/... Anuj Ahooja / @quillmatiq@mastodon.social : Apple has decided that it also wants to extort independent creators now. — https://news.patreon.com/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : From this, it sounds like Apple has threatened to kick Patreon out of the App Store if they choose to remove in-app purchase instead, like Netflix and others did. How is this not criminal behavior? Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith … : I'm guessing Patreon won't be allowed to tell its users *why* they're being gouged on iOS, because Apple doesn't allow anything like that that could embarrass Apple. — “We've never raised prices” my ass. Swooping into other peoples' markets and taxing them on revenue that has *nothing to do with you* is objectively worse than raising prices … Liam / @ThePlant@mastodon.social : Patreon are about to force everyone on to subscription billing 😫 — https://news.patreon.com/... They're using Apple's 30% tax as the excuse to finally put everyone on it. This messes me and so many others up, since it's no longer a proper paypacket each month and instead everyone trickles in on whatever date they signed up. X: Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : Now Apple is demanding a 30% cut of all Patreon DONATIONS. Apple must be stopped. The digital world cannot go on like this. Matthew Ball / @ballmatthew : @TimSweeneyEpic For every $100 in *revenue* that Roblox creators make, the App Stores collect $90 in *profit*, and Roblox loses $150 (figures are TTM) [image] @balancecrafting : Important context for Apple's extortion of Patreon creators: Apple is violating a court injunction from the Epic antitrust case that banned anticompetitive app store tactics https://www.courtlistener.com/ ... Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : Following news that Apple succeeded in taking 30% from Patreon subscriptions, Substack reveals it's working w Apple for in-app subscriptions. Terrible idea, given it would mean Apple takes 30%, Substack 10%, Stripe 3%: so 43% goes to platforms. I'd rather Substack have no app. [image] Patrick Wardle / @patrickwardle : @objective_see's free open-source tools are supported by many amazingly generous patrons (via @Patreon) 🥰 On the other hand, @Apple (the most valuable company in the world w/ a $3+ trillion market cap) is now wanting a massive % cut 😒 ...greedy much!? https://techcrunch.com/... Theo / @t3dotgg : $10 Patreon sub split: - $3 to Apple - $1 to Patreon - $6 to the creator I'm supporting This is not fair. Apple's 30% cut is anti-creator. It's time for them to make changes. David Barnard / @drbarnard : 🤦♂️ This is one of those where Apple probably should've just kept pushing the “they're grandfathered into not needing to use IAP” explanation. Which makes me think it's more about legal maneuvering than making more money from Patreon. Some apps being forced to pay and others not doesn't look good when it comes up in court... Austen Allred / @austen : Still crazy to me that Apple gets a 30% cut of digital purchases made on iPhone apps. I can't imagine even proposing a 30% cut. You get almost a third of the revenue generated?? 2-3% credit card processing fees seem lofty sometimes. But Thirty. Percent. Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : It's not just Patreon, it's a sweeping Apple cash grab across the whole creator ecosystem. Apple has no right to force app developers to use their ludicrously overpriced payment processor or pay Apple junk fees for using competing payment services; the court found this unlawful. Paul Graham / @paulg : @Austen This is potential energy that will one day drive a competitor. It won't be easy to create a competitor, but it will happen eventually, and when it does... DeVaughn Taylor / @_daddydisco : Fellow creators, did y'all see this new @Patreon change? I can see it's not their fault, but holy shit @Apple / @AppleSupport this is absolutely insane. I though I was misreading 3% but oh no, it's a whopping 30% fee 🤯 creators either have to lose money or risk losing patrons [image] Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : Patron's news announcement highlights that Apple's 30% junk fees are passed on directly to consumers in the form of higher prices, and exposes Apple's “small developers only pay 15%” lie: all Patreon customers however small will now pay a 30% junk fee on donations. Florian Mueller / @florian4gamers : Another example of why the app tax is unreasonable and it's not just about how much money some major game makers make on iOS but there are cases like this which are about the little guys. What Patreon does isn't good either. They should simply not offer a native iOS app anymore. Iris Compiet / @iriscompietart : Seriously @patreon, what's up with this. I never wanted this subscription billing and now I'm forced to. Plus either myself or my patrons have to fork up an additional 30% because of Apple fees. I'm extremely disappointed and frustrated. I might be done with this [image] Matt McMuscles / @mattmcmuscles : If you are thinking of joining my Patreon later this year, do NOT use the Patreon App on iOS. Apple is adding a 30% additional fee to new signups, which is only benefitting Apple, not creators and certainly not Patrons. Consider using Android or Desktop come this November. [image] @jonlamart : Look at this Hot new Bullshit from Patreon and @Apple You guys saw that independent artists were actually making a living and just HAD to fucking squeeze this community a little harder didn't you?! The layoffs, GenAi wasn't enough?! Fuck you #Patreon #Apple #Antitrust [image] @darlingstrawbie : 🚨 to anyone who uses patreon 🚨 in november they will start charging an app store 30% fee on top of regular membership prices for new sign ups on iphones. creators do not see ANY of this money, it goes directly to apple. PLEASE don't spend extra money, join via the web/android! [image] @zachhazard : Please do not use the Patreon app to subscribe to artists pages, just do it from the website please. In fact delete the Patreon app anyway because it's a piece of junk that's frustrating to use and useless for creators. Sam Aaron / @samaaron : If you support me or any other artist/creator via @Apple's @Patreon iOS app - be sure to switch to the web for payments. From November Apple will be pocketing 30% of all creator income paid via iOS. This is terrible news for those surviving on small donations. Shame on Apple. @gaijingoombah : DO NOT USE the iOS app for Patreon to support creators you love. Apple is taking 30% of it or will be charging you MORE! Use any other method. [image] @galoogamelady : I know I haven't used my Patreon in a long long time. But are we really going to let Apple do this? You guys are ok buying iPhones when this is the shit they do once they hold a monopoly? Stupid ass brand. [image] @taylor_titmouse : hey if you ever want to subscribe to a patreon in a future: don't fucking use the iOS app. just subscribe on a website. this is ridiculous [image] @kenneynl : If you use the @Patreon app on iOS and decide to donate to your favorite artist or developer Apple will get 30% of your donation. Because... you know... because??? Eh... because...??? [image] Kyle Russell / @kylebrussell : never going to use the in-app payment just to spite Apple at this point LinkedIn: Patrick Wardle : The Objective-See Foundation, Inc's free open-source tools are supported by many amazingly generous patrons (via Patreon) 🥰 … Sarah Perez : Apple says Patreon must switch to its billing system or risk removal from App Store — Apple has threatened to remove crowdfunding app Patreon … Forums: Hacker News : Apple to take 30% of all Patreon donations r/technology : Apple says Patreon must switch to its billing system or risk removal from App Store See also Mediagazer