In-app purchase rules

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James Murdza

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Sep 12, 2021, 8:48:30 PM9/12/21
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For those that haven’t heard, a court in California recently ruled Apple requiring a cut of all in-app purchases illegal (Apple v. Epic) starting in three months.

For us developers, what does this mean? On macOS, I currently take payments through Paddle and Setapp. Should we expect something similar to come for mobile? Thoughts on what will the new rules will be?

Cheers,
James

Ezekiel Elin

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Sep 12, 2021, 9:21:27 PM9/12/21
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My interpretation was that the only change is to allow “steering” to a web payment. This isn’t the same as taking purchases in app, although in many cases it has similar benefits.

I believe Hey is an example of this. They would tell users to go online and pay, which apple previously said was in violation. Now, I believe, that would be allowed.

An example of where no real change occurs are games that sell tokens. Unless they have a web store, they’d still have to use IAP only.

Please anyone correct me if I’m confused here.

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 12, 2021, at 8:48 PM, James Murdza <james...@gmail.com> wrote:


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James Murdza

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Sep 12, 2021, 9:29:21 PM9/12/21
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I was also wondering if that means you can open Safari, or just ask users to go to a website. (The latter seems silly, admittedly.)

If this screenshot from Fortnite is accurate, they really did direct users right to the payment page:

James

Richard Akerboom

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Sep 12, 2021, 10:38:38 PM9/12/21
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What Fortnite did is still illegal

if in app payment, must still be use Apple payment and pay 30% as before (or 15% etc). 

as Ezekiel points out, only change is that now in app you can tell someone where to pay out of app like what web page to go to to pay

Boomer 

Michael Yacavone

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Sep 14, 2021, 9:17:33 AM9/14/21
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The best pieces I’ve read on this have been from Florian Mueller, who I started reading during that big API copyright case (Oracle vs Google?). He’s not optimistic… 




Michael 

James Murdza

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Sep 14, 2021, 10:03:05 PM9/14/21
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OK, I think I found the TLDR: "developers shall merely be allowed to provide users with information about prices on other platforms (WWW, Android, PCs, consoles...) to have at least a minimal competitive constraint on Apple. Just transparency. That's it.”

Thanks for pointing me to those links.

James

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