Patreon, writing in a press release published Monday:

As we first announced last year, Apple is requiring that Patreon use their in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app by November 2024.

This has two major consequences for creators:

  1. Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop.
  2. Any creator currently on first-of-the-month or per-creation billing plans will have to switch over to subscription billing to continue earning in the iOS app, because that’s the only billing type Apple’s in-app purchase system supports.

This decision is like if Apple decided to automatically steal 30 percent of tips drivers got through the Uber app on iOS. Not only is it incredibly disingenuous and highlights the biggest shortcomings of capitalism, but it also represents a clear misreading of how Patreon creators deliver benefits to their subscribers via the Patreon app on iOS. A video, article, or other content on Patreon is a service, not an in-app purchase. People aren’t just unlocking content via a subscription — they’re paying another person for a service that happens to be content. It’s like if Apple suddenly took 30 percent of Venmo transactions: It is possible a service paid through Venmo is digital, but what business of it is Apple’s to determine what people are buying and how to tax it? Get out of my room, I’m paying people.

People who subscribe to their favorite creators on Patreon aren’t paying Patreon anything — they’re paying the creator through Patreon. Apple thinks people are doing business with Patreon when that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the transaction; Patreon is just the payment processor. It’s just like tips on Uber, payments on Venmo, or products on Amazon. People are paying for a human-provided service; if that particular human didn’t exist or didn’t get paid, that service would not exist. It’s not like Apple Music where users are paying a monthly subscription to a company that provides digital content — Patreon memberships are person-to-person transactions between creators and audiences, and peer-to-peer payments ought to be exempt from the In-App Purchase fee.

I don’t even really care if this tax is against the Digital Services Act, because that law is less legislation and more a free pass for the E.U. government to do whatever it wants to play the hero. Rather, I’m concerned Apple has become excessively greedy for the sake of proving a point; in other words, it looks like Apple has inherited the European Commission’s ego. Paying for V-Bucks on “Fortnite” or a music streaming subscription via Spotify is not the same as directly funding an individual creator. The former is a product, the latter is a service1. But it seems like Apple has no intention of even discerning that dissimilarity — instead, it has blindly issued a decision without even taking into consideration the possible effects on people’s livelihoods.

Patreon’s press release is not written from the perspective of a petulant child — ahem, Spotify and Epic Games — but a well-meaning corporation that wants to insulate its customers from penalties imposed by a large business. Patreon gives creators two options:

  1. Increase subscription costs on iOS by an automatic amount — Patreon handles the math — so creators make the same money on iOS as other platforms, offsetting the fee.

  2. Keep each subscription price the same on iOS, with each subscription netting less for the creator.

This is the best possible way Patreon could’ve handled this situation. It’s not pulling out of the App Store or In-App Purchase, filing a ridiculous lawsuit against Apple for some nonsensical reason, or complaining on social media. It’s trying to minimize the damage Apple has created while protesting an unfair decision. But either way, hardworking creators are caught in the middle of this kerfuffle, which is unfortunate — and entirely Apple’s fault. If these people had their own apps, most of them would probably qualify for the App Store Small Business Program, reducing the fee to 15 percent at least, but because they happen to use a large company as their payment processor, they’re stuck paying Apple’s fee or suffering the effects of higher subscription prices. And neither can they advertise to their viewers that prices are cheaper on the web because that’s against App Store guidelines.

Patreon creators aren’t App Store developers and shouldn’t have to follow App Store rules. They’re doing business with Patreon, not Apple. They shouldn’t fall under the jurisdiction of Apple’s nonsense at all because none of the accounting is done on their end. They couldn’t offer an alternate payment processor even if they wanted because they don’t take their viewers’ money — Patreon does. The distinction between content creators and App Store developers like Spotify and Epic couldn’t be clearer, and Apple needs to get its head out from under the rock and exempt Patreon from this onerous fee structure.

  1. I use “service” a lot in this article. While Apple likes to call its subscription product business its “services” business, subscriptions aren’t services. People doing things for each other is a service. A service is defined as “a piece of work done for a client or customer that does not involve manufacturing goods.” ↩︎