Can we undo the [dupe] on this? That was the announcement, this is the official applicant page, and this page has actual important information like deadlines compared to the announcement.
I am not sure if the market is healthy, though. GOG and other alternative stores didn't take off. While Epic has their strategy of giving away some free games to attract traffic, I am not sure how well that translates to actual purchases. If a customer has a choice between buying a game at the same price between two stores, they're going to stick to the one which they already use and have a big library on. And even though Steam's community features are anemic, people do get SOME value from having friends on Steam that own the same game and so on. I think it'll be hard for Epic to crack this one.
Steam has a strong hold because developers can generate as many keys as they want for free. So if indie games sell games in Humble Bundle and the likes, they are distributing Steam keys because it costs them nothing.
This alone puts Steam on the map of many gamers interested in indie games.
Am I reading this right that there's a big cliff between making $999,999 and $1M? With that and the somewhat fuzzy notion of "associated accounts", I predict a lot of ugly rules-gaming & enforcement activity in the future.
No, you are reading it wrong. All money up to $1 million is "taxed" at 15%, and all money after $1 million is "taxed" at 30%. It's like income tax brackets in the US.
Thus, there is no advantage for trying to stay at $999,999. If you make $1.2m in sales, you get 15% taken on the $1m and 30% taken from the leftover $200k.
Yes, the Tax Rates can be in brackets because you fill them out once a year.
Any developers can fill me in but I doubt apple is either holding onto payments so they can apply their tax at the end of the year or “charging” a developer at the end of a year based on how much they make. Apple Tax is on a per transaction basis so while it might be nice if Apple changes every company 15% and then 30% after they made a certain amount that’s not what they are doing and instead you have to “prequalify”.
It works like marginal rate for the year. If you made less than 1m in 2020, your taxing is 15% on first 1m and 30% on the rest in 2021. In 2022, your tax rate would be 30% since you no longer qualify for this.if you make less than 1m$ in 2022, you start at 15% again in 2023
In that case, Apple is expecting that the odds of somebody making less money in 2022 because of the increased rate compared to 2021 to be very unlikely.
I.e. If you sold exactly $1M and were taxed at 15%, Apple takes $150K and you make $850K. Under an increased rate of 30%, that means you would lose money if you made less than approximately $1.25M in the year after, but the odds of someone with $1M in revenue failing to get to $1.25M by next year is very unlikely.
Apple should have made this like the tax rates, first 1M at 15%, rest at 30%.
With this move, apple didn't affect their revenue, while looked good to everyone. From a prior thread [1], this affects very little of apple's revenue.
[1] Information from Sensor Tower indicating the App Store cut would apply to an estimated 98 percent of iOS app developers who generate roughly 5 percent of the store’s revenue.
Associated Developer Accounts? It is hard to draw the line here. I have 2 company with different partners. It is so vague if I should add associated developer accounts or not.
You have majority (over 50%) corporate, individual, or partnership interest in the ownership or shares of another Apple Developer Program account.
Another Apple Developer Program member has majority (over 50%) corporate, individual, or partnership interest in the ownership or shares of your account.
You have ultimate decision-making authority over another Apple Developer Program account.
Another Apple Developer Program member has ultimate decision-making authority over your account.
Then what do you think about these scenarios? Me and my partner has a company with 2 different apps right now.
Scenario 1: We open 2 different LLC companies with 50% 50% shares. These 2 companies don't have any majority and decision making authority in each other. Totally independent different companies with same owners. If we transfer 1 app to an LLC and other 1 app to the other LLC.
Scenario 2: I open an LLC as an 100% owner myself and my partner open an another LLC as an 100% owner himself. Totally independent different companies. If we transfer 1 app to an LLC and other 1 app to the other LLC.
Do you think these 2 companies can get benefit from the program in scenario 1 and scenario 2?
What? The $100 fee has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the review process. Like, do you seriously believe that makers of all the shitty apps out there can't come up with $100??
Also, Google developer account used to be paid at one point. I have no idea if it still is but when I used to publish in the early days there was a fee to pay. Didn't stop the shitty apps from appearing because....that's not what the fee is for.
What an interesting new development, this generates tons of goodwill from smaller devs while sticking it to multimillion dollar companies that were pushing the hardest to get Apple to change their fee structure.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135410