Apple last week announced an insanely complex set of changes to its App Store terms in the EU, and hidden in the small–print is one sign that the company might be reducing its standard commission from 30% to 20%, and that it may make this change globally.
If so, it would be the first time the company has ever reduced its 30% cut for all developers, and might go a long way to tackling its legal battles with antitrust regulators around the world …
We last week reported on a set of sweeping changes Apple made to its App Store terms in the EU.
Deliberately convoluted terms?
To say that the new terms are convoluted would be a major understatement. Even before getting into one complex set of changes, we had to open by describing when they do and don’t apply.
Apple has announced additional changes to business terms in the European Union. The changes do not apply to apps distributed via alternative app marketplaces. They also do not apply to communication and promotion offers that use static text inside an app. They only apply to links that direct users to the web, as well as in-app alternative payment service providers.
As for the terms themselves, there’s a choice between a 5% commission and a 13% commission that is a 10% cut for some developers some of the time. There’s a fixed-price fee which is being replaced by a percentage fee, but not yet. Plus Apple is appealing the basis for these changes, so they may again change.
Flighty founder and Apple Design Award winner Ryan Jones said on X that literally nobody he knew could figure out what the terms really mean.
Zero developer friends can figure out what normal app commissions will be. None. 😞https://t.co/SPzN2uS75K — Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) June 26, 2025
John Gruber blames both the EU and Apple for the complexity, but suggests that Apple may have deliberately made its own terms hard to understand.
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