Nobody forces developers to publish on the App Store — it's a voluntary business relationship with known terms. Retroactively rewriting those terms through legislation is a terrible precedent that will make platforms less willing to invest in developer tooling.
It genuinely breaks my heart that we're willing to trash one of the safest software distribution systems ever built just so Spotify can squeeze out a few more margin points. The store IS the product, and that costs money to run.
Every time a country has forced competing payment systems on platforms, developers don't actually lower prices for users — they just pocket the difference. So who exactly is this policy helping?
I've had my credit card saved safely in the App Store for years with zero fraud issues, and the second you open the door to random payment processors, that protection evaporates. No thanks, I'll pay the 30% for peace of mind.
Apple and Google built these ecosystems from scratch — the security infrastructure, the review process, the billing protection — and now regulators want to hand that value to third parties for free? That's just confiscation dressed up as competition policy.
Competition is literally the whole point — if Apple's payment system is actually better and safer, developers will choose it voluntarily. The fact that they have to mandate it tells you everything about whether it can survive on its own merits.
We'd never let a mall owner demand 30% of every sale a store makes just because shoppers walked through their doors, so why do we let Apple get away with the exact same thing in a digital space?
I switched my small fitness app to an alternative payment processor the second Epic's lawsuit cracked the door open, and my revenue jumped 22% overnight — that money went back into hiring, not Apple's war chest.
The whole 'platform deserves its cut' argument falls apart when you realize the cut is literally 6x what payment processors like Stripe charge. This isn't compensation, it's a toll booth with a gun.
Apple and Google didn't build my app, they didn't fund my development, they didn't acquire my users — so why are they taking 30% of every transaction I make? Forcing them to allow competing payment systems is just basic fairness.