Apple's New Policy Regarding Directing Users to Your Website

  • 17 January 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 34 views
M
Badge +2

I’m curious to see what the RevenueCat folks, as well as other users, make of Apple’s just-announced change in policy regarding directing users to make purchases on the app’s website: https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitlement-us/

 

I think that this change has something to do with recent anti-trust lawsuits, possibly involving the Fortnite people.  But, if you read through the article, it sounds like Apple is not only making a lot of demands on how to make use of the new policy, but they are also expecting developers to continue giving them a cut of the sales, including the ones made on the app’s website, if users clicked a link to the site from within the app (although I don’t know how they plan to enforce that).

 

Thoughts?

3 replies

sharif
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Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Hi @Mike Davis,

We’ve compiled our initial thoughts in this blog post here: https://www.revenuecat.com/blog/growth/apple-vs-epic-supreme-court-ruling/ it goes through the basics of what’s required to implement external purchases with Apple (spoiler alert, it’s quite a lot) and an analysis of what that means for mobile app developers. Let me know if you have any questions about it!

Sharif
M
Badge +2

Thanks, @sharif.  Having read through Apple’s policy updates, I came to the same conclusion as the blog article - Apple is only giving lip service to allowing developers to direct users to make purchases on their websites.  It’s not at all practical to follow the guidelines that Apple has issued.

What we have been doing, and will continue to do, is allowing users to make purchases for in-app content on our website, but we don’t direct users to do so from within our app.  Instead, our marketing (email, social, advertising, etc.) directs users to our site where they can make purchases that show up in the app.  Or, if the user prefers, they can make purchases in-app through Apple (or Google, in the case of our Android app).  The user has the choice, and we are in compliance with Apple because there is no content that is available for purchase on our site which isn’t also available for purchase inside the app.

Maybe Apple will update their policy to make it easier for developers to direct users to make purchases on websites, but only if they are forced to by the courts.

sharif
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

@Mike Davis happy to help! I’ve seen many developers use your strategy successfully, I see no issue continuing down that path.

Sharif

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