Apple has up to date its App Retailer insurance policies to spell out how builders can hyperlink to exterior fee platforms, as reported by 9to5Mac. Builders will nonetheless owe Apple a reduce in the event that they use an outdoor fee platform. Apple will take a 27 % reduce (versus the 30 % in lots of instances) or 12 % if a developer is a part of the App Retailer Small Enterprise Program, in accordance with a help web page about exterior buy hyperlinks.
Part 3.1.1(a) of the App Retailer Evaluation Pointers lays down extra of the brand new guidelines for builders who need to hyperlink to different fee strategies, like how they’ve to use for an “entitlement” to allow them. Builders can also’t solely obtain funds from exterior Apple’s walled backyard; they’ll even have to supply Apple’s in-app buy system of their apps.
Tim Sweeney, Epic’s founder and CEO, isn’t happy with Apple’s updates to its insurance policies. He calls the 27 % price “anticompetitive,” criticizes Apple’s guidelines for a way the hyperlinks seem and the way they work, and highlighted what he calls the “scare display screen” that customers will see once they go away an app to go to an exterior web site.
He says that Epic “will contest Apple’s bad-faith compliance plan in District Courtroom.” I’ve replied to Sweeney and emailed Epic’s PR workforce to attempt to make clear what meaning.
Replace January sixteenth, 7:25PM ET: Added tweet from Tim Sweeney.