DMA Compliance: Custom External Link Designs
Developers who’ve agreed to the Alternative Terms Addendum for Apps in the EU have new options for their apps in the EU:
- Alternative app marketplaces. Marketplaces can choose to offer a catalog of apps solely from the developer of the marketplace.
- Linking out to purchase. When directing users to complete a transaction for digital goods or services on an external webpage, developers can choose how to design promotions, discounts, and other deals. The Apple-provided design templates, which are optimized for key purchase and promotional use cases, are now optional.
The second is a bigger concession — effectively, the elimination of mandatory Apple-designed scare sheets for link-outs to the web. It sounds like the second truly eliminates anti-steering provisions for developers who opt into the new EU rules.
[…]
That link-out screens may now contain promotional and pricing information, and don’t need to follow Apple’s templates — that’s a mere policy change too, but one I suspect Apple does begrudge. And it’s obviously something developers would want. Do you want a very plain-looking, totally unbranded screen, that emphasizes more than anything that you’re leaving the safe confines of the Apple ecosystem? Or would you like to design your own screen, in your own style, with your own emphasis? This, to me, reeks of a change at the behest of the EC.
US developers will still have to use Apple’s scare sheets.
Previously:
- Apple Tweaks New EU App Store Business Terms
- DMA Compliance: Alternative App Stores But No Sideloading
- StoreKit Purchase Link Entitlement for United States
