Developers interested in distributing iOS apps on their websites also have to cross a high bar. This includes being registered or incorporated in the EU, being a member of “good standing in the Apple Developer Program for two continuous years or more,” and having an app that received “more than one million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior calendar year.”
Apple will also vet the apps, which must receive official “notarization” from the company, before they can distributed on third-party platforms.
Developers must pay a 17% or 10% commission, and fork over “€0.50 for each first annual install” if their app crosses one million total installs over a 12-month period.
Critics have since slammed the new fee structure, calling it anticompetitive. “This is extortion, plain and simple,” Spotify said in January. “For any developer wondering if this might work for you, you need to have less than a million customers and essentially sign up for not growing in the long run.”
Did they really just pull a Unity move with charging per download??
This is not going to be good for any developers that sit in that danger zone of offering a free app with in-app purchases. If they don’t make enough money (over €500k) once they hit that 1 million download threshold… they could owe more money than they make.
Edit: Looks like the first million downloads are always free for that year, but anything after that and they start charging per download. Still bad for free apps if they grow a lot without getting much income from their users.