The “Apple Tax” You Can’t Escape
Chips and cameras have never been the real core advantages. The biggest advantage is that the system is self-developed and the ecosystem is closed. This allows Apple to build a virtuous cycle ecological framework, strictly control software quality, and get a share of the prosperity of the software ecosystem.
Apps listed on the iOS platform that generate in-app consumption, such as recharging game currency, purchasing memberships, and buying skins, must pay a 30% "Apple tax."
This rule is almost mandatory. If a developer secretly bypasses Apple's payment channels and guides consumers to recharge in other ways, such as jumping to a web page to pay, Apple will remove the APP if it is discovered.
There is an exception. Apple provides certain support to small businesses and independent developers with an annual transaction volume of less than US$1 million, and only needs to pay a 15% commission.
Rather than commission rates, small developers pay more attention to leveraging the influence of Apple’s platform to make the pie bigger. Those who are really dissatisfied with the "Apple tax" are often major Internet companies with peaked revenue growth, large user base, and strong monetization capabilities – MiHoYo is an example.
MiHoYo tried to bypass Apple twice
For Apple, MiHoYo is a typical high-quality game developer. Although the number of users is not as good as Tencent mobile games, the amount of krypton gold per capita is extremely terrifying. For this reason, Apple has endorsed Genshin Impact many times at the press conference, but judging from various signs, they may have a discordant partnership.
It is reported that miHoYo has twice tried to bypass Apple’s payment channels to reduce its “Apple tax” expenditure. However, MiHoYo's actions are very cautious. It does not guide users to jump to WeChat or Alipay, but to its self-built game community APP – MiYouShe.
Miyoushe provides a payment option that jumps to the web page. iOS players can recharge Genshin Impact through the web page. When Apple discovered MiHoYo’s little tricks, it immediately removed MiHoYo from its shelves. It came back online a few days later, and the recharge entrance was gone.
After being suppressed by Apple, miHoYo did not give up. At the end of August, MiHoYo launched a mini program on Alipay. iOS users can recharge the game in the mini program.
Unfortunately, after this method was discovered by Apple, it also asked MiHoYo to deactivate this payment channel. So far, MiHoYo has tried twice and both ended in failure.
Many people may think that MiHoYo's only purpose is to bypass the Apple tax. As a veteran player, I think there are more complicated reasons.
Difficulty recharging for iOS users
On social platforms, we can see complaints from iOS users: Miyoushe cannot recharge, and Alipay cannot recharge either. I believe you will also be confused: Is it so troublesome to top up money in the game?
If you have played Genshin Impact, you will know bigo cheap recharge . Genshin Impact has very strict control over the source of account registration. Genshin Impact’s domestic servers are divided into official servers and channel servers, and channel servers are further divided into B servers and Xiaomi servers. The servers do not communicate with each other and cannot be connected. And if you register for the Mi server, you cannot log in to the PC side.
In addition, although Genshin Impact has opened up the four major platforms of Android, iOS, PC, and PS4, there are restrictions on recharge, even for the official server.
For example, in the official server, if you first registered an account on Android, you later switched to playing. In this case, even if the game data can be synchronized, the recharge can only be done on Android or logged in to the PC, which is very troublesome.
My personal guess is that MiHoYo does this to prevent loss of profits while enabling cross-platform play. However, what is the best of both worlds for developers has caused a lot of trouble for users, especially iOS users.
To put it simply, MiHoYo tried to bypass Apple payment channels twice, not only to avoid Apple tax, but also to try to solve the problem of difficulty in recharging for iOS users.
What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss together.
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