Developers looking to push US players into web shops to make IAPs will have new hurdles to jump – and will have to give Apple a 27% commission anyway.
Yesterday’s US court ruling was intended to unlock IAPs outside of Apple’s payments ecosystem for players in the US. But Apple’s official guidance on how to do that is clearly designed to make that process as difficult as possible for developers and players.
Studios offering external payments must get further approvals from Apple, add ‘scare screens’ to the user flow and still give Apple a 27% commission on each payment.
Epic boss Tim Sweeney has – of course – quickly moved to condemn the policies, and pledged to fight them in court. “Apple filed a bad-faith “compliance” plan for the District Court’s injunction,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.
“It totally undermines the order allowing “buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to IAP”.”
Sweeney neatly summarised his concerns with the new guidelines here, again on X:
“1) Apple has introduced an anticompetitive new 27% tax on web purchases. Apple has never done this before, and it kills price competition. Developers can’t offer digital items more cheaply on the web after paying a third-party payment processor 3-6% and paying this new 27% Apple Tax.”
“2) Apple dictates all aspects of these links and doesn’t allow them in the app’s ordinary payment flow. Rather, links must be separated out into a different section of the app, away from places where users actually buy stuff.”
“3) Apple requires developers to open a generic web browser session, forcing the user to log in to the developer’s web site again, to make a purchase. And because of #2, users will have to search all over again for the digital item they wanted to buy.”
“4) Apple will front-run competing payment processors with their own “scare screen” to disadvantage them.”
Sweeney concluded: “Epic will contest Apple’s bad-faith compliance plan in District Court.”
The official guidance on Apple’s developer site breaks down the new measures in full.
In short, developers looking to implement IAPs in browsers will have to request an “entitlement” to do so from Apple, serve scary pop-ups to warn players they are leaving Apple’s ecosystem, report all external earnings to Apple and pay a 27% commission on every purchase.
As Sweeney noted, the browser window developers are allowed to serve in-app also means players must log in to whatever external payment provider the developer chooses, further complicating the user flow.
Anyone looking to use this functionality must also provide Apple with “transaction reports” every month, and will be invoiced from there if payment to Apple is due.
The commission on top is 27% as standard, and 12% for developers eligible for the Small Business Program or if the transaction is an auto-renewing subscription in its second year or later.
Responding to the new guidelines, David Heinmeier Hansson, cofounder of email app Hey and vocal critic of Apple’s App Store policies summarised his thoughts on X:
“Apple is going to poison the one victory Epic secured in their lawsuit so bad nobody would ever think to use it. They want a 27%(!!!!) commission on any link from an app to a website, reporting every few weeks, AND the right to audit your books?? Insane.”
Apple’s behaviour is not without precedent. It has applied similar policies in response to rulings made in the Netherlands and South Korea before, which require developers to jump over extra approval hurdles and add on a commission fee that nullifies any potential benefit to the developer or end user.
