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Comment by nathankunicki | Hacker News Reader

But you don't pay 30% more - if it was the case that devs were allowed to make the iOS in app purchases 30% more than the counterparts, that would be fine (well, not fine, but at least it would give the people options).

Apple has blocked stores from doing so in the past, demanding that the iOS price be the same as outside iOS, effectively taking 30% of developers revenue when bought through the app store.

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And now they've taken that one step further and insist that if you accept payment anywhere outside of iOS, you are forced to accept payment on device as well, in order for Apple to get access to your market.

For things like games where you're buying "5 more rings" or a "hat for your virtual pet" ok fine -- but for something where you're offering a subscription service to physical therapists where their subscription buys them things in the real world, this is completely unreasonable.

We were forced to "include" this functionality in the app or Apple threatened to remove it, so we did and just made it impossible to find.

Woah, seriously? If this is true, that is truly anti-competitive. Apple would be basically trying to pass off the competitive disadvantage a 30% cut costs by passing it onto the developers.

Do you know any examples that app developer has entered into a deal with Apple to pay that 30% cut even for sales outside iOS or MacOS platforms?

No, but I don't understand the relevance, much less why a developer would do that (or why Apple would ask for it)?

Of course a developer could just raise prices elsewhere to make the cost equal to that on iOS if they raised the price to include Apple's 30% cut, but the problem would remain.

A developer might voluntarily request that to make the payment infrastructure simpler by making the payment routing equal for everyone.

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