“Reasonably Necessary” External Purchase Fee
Apple should be able to collect a reasonable commission on purchases made using external links included in iOS apps, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled today (via Reuters). The U.S. Court of Appeals partially reversed sanctions imposed on Apple after Apple was found to have willfully violated an injunction in the ongoing Epic Games vs. Apple legal battle.
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Apple is not going to be able to start charging a commission immediately, though. The case has been sent back to the district court so that a reasonable fee can be determined.
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Apple can restrict developers from making external links more prominent than in-app purchase options. Specifically, Apple can restrict a developer from putting buttons, links, or other calls to action in more prominent fonts, larger sizes, larger quantities, and more prominent places than buttons for in-app purchases. Apple has to allow developers to place buttons in “at least” the same fonts, sizes, and places as Apple’s own.
Kyle Orland (Hacker News, Slashdot):
The ruling, signed by a panel of three appellate court judges, affirmed that Apple’s initial attempts to charge a 27 percent fee to iOS developers using outside payment options “had a prohibitive effect, in violation of the injunction.” Similarly, Apple’s restrictions on how those outside links had to be designed were overly broad; the appeals court suggests that Apple can only ensure that internal and external payment options are presented in a similar fashion.
The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in “bad faith” by refusing to comply with the injunction, rejecting viable, compliant alternatives in internal discussions. And the appeals court was also not convinced by Apple’s process-focused arguments, saying the district court properly evaluated materials Apple argued were protected by attorney-client privilege.
While the district court barred Apple from charging any fees for payments made outside of its App Store, the appeals court now suggests that Apple should still be able to charge a “reasonable fee” based on its “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy.” It will be up to Apple and the district court to determine what that kind of “reasonable fee” should look like going forward.
“If you want to have an app go through review with custom linkouts, maybe there’s several hundred dollars of fees associated with that every time you submit an app, which is perfectly reasonable because there are real people at Apple doing those things and Apple pays them, and we should be contributing to that,” Sweeney says. But he says that the ruling, “completely shuts down, I think, for all time, Apple’s theory that they should be able to charge arbitrary junk fees for access.”
With these two areas that Apple would be allowed to charge for, Sweeney says that “I can’t imagine any justification for a percentage of developer revenue being assessed here.”
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The ruling wasn’t the only big news for Epic and Fortnite on mobile today: the game also returned to Google Play in the US after similarly being booted by Google when Epic added the in-app payments system to Fortnite. Epic and Google announced last month that they have agreed to settle their lawsuit, and while the two sides are still seeking court approval for their settlement, it resolves their disputes worldwide.
The court ruling is confusing.
It says Apple can charge “necessary” costs for use of its IP but seems to interpret IP extremely narrowly to apply only to external links?
I’m not even sure what that IP is supposed to be.
Previously:
- Fortnite Returns to US App Store
- Court Orders Apple to Comply With Anti-Steering Injunction
- Testimony on External Purchase Fee and Scare Screens
- Epic’s Document Request and Apple’s Injunction Challenge
- Hearing for Apple Violating Epic’s Injunction
- Epic Challenges External Link Rules and Commission
- StoreKit Purchase Link Entitlement for United States
12 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
This is completely backwards.
Apple should be charging developers a "security review" fee for apps published through *Apple's* store, and charging developers who don't use Apple's store *nothing* because Apple provides no service to them.
And then, Apple should be required to pay a percentage of all iOS device revenue into a fund, that is distributed to everyone who publishes apps on the App store, proportional to their download / user retention statistics, as a recognition that it is third party developers who created the market for the iPhone. Same as copyright associations collect from media companies, and educational institutions.
Government-mandated price ceilings? How interesting this will turn out to be. Something something free market?
Also, can we collectively stop quoting Sweeney? What a buffoon. Not a good face on this movement. Surely there are others who have something to say that we can quote instead? (I mean, that’s the whole point, right? That other developers are being put-upon by Apple’s fees?)
@Michael, silent majority? What are they afraid of?
Seriously, if there’s a lot of upset about it, I’d really expect to hear more moaning and groaning from the non-billionaires (who are not weirdos)
@Someone Retaliation. For example, right after ProtonMail spoke out, they were blocked from updating their app for a month and threatened with removal from the App Store.
@Michael, You’re referring to this? https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/06/30/proton-v-apple/
So… maybe? Correlation != Causation, but I suppose it could increase scrutiny to see if you’re actually following the rules?
@Someone There’s no evidence that they weren’t following the rules. The whole thing started after they told their customers about Apple’s IAP shakedown—suddenly trying to get 30% of the revenue from a hosted service—in other words when Apple was changing the deal. Even if they were temporarily out of compliance with the new “rules,” which I put in quotes because I don’t think Apple put them in writing, they were still supposed to be allowed bug fix updates.
There are other examples of retaliation, though I can’t recall the specifics off the top of my head.
@Michael, I think you’re referring to this? https://archive.ph/na98k
As I read that article, it seems Proton promoted or mentioned in the app buying a subscription on their website, which, at least to me for a decade or more, was clearly not allowed, so Proton freaked out and rather than stop, added IAP and made a stink, then Apple clarified/made concrete the rules in an explicit way.
Now, while I think that’s really annoying to the companies making these apps, Apple has also always said that as the world evolves/progresses, it’ll have to update its rules. And as I’ve said before, they’ve been pretty clear what their guiding principles are, so some of this was somewhat predictable.
It’s also annoying that Apple won’t respond to hypotheticals or won’t respond immediately until it’s clear there’s a problem, so I feel for everyone involved, but I’m not sure it’s fair to frame this as ‘retaliation’.
Again, coincidence != causation, especially when the guiding principles were stated at the beginning.
@Someone I think you are completely misunderstanding what happened with Proton Mail. It’s always been allowed to mention stuff on the web site. Proton didn’t change anything in their app or on the web. It was Apple that changed its policy (to require IAP for this class of app) without updating the rules. Proton freaked out and added IAP because Apple told them otherwise the app (even the old version, approved for years) would be removed from the store. The retaliation is that the threat of removal came after Proton notified its customers about Apple’s change in policy. Apple subsequently blocked security updates for Proton VPN because it didn’t like the app description, again in violation of its own policy that bug fix updates won’t be blocked for policy reasons.
@Kristoffer he has demanded that developers not pay for things they don't need to and for customers to be able to get things they should be able to. The horror.
