Tim Sweeney is the author of “Hot Garbage: Apple App Store Changes”

App Store Nonarization: The iMessage Project in the Light of Recent Apple News and Reports from the Netherlands, Korea, and South Korea

Apple still plans to keep a close eye on the app distribution process. Distribution through third-party markets is still managed by Apple, however apps must be notarized by Apple. Developers will only be allowed to distribute a single version of their app across different app stores, and they’ll still have to abide by some basic platform requirements, like getting scanned for malware.

Under the new terms, apps distributed through the App Store that choose to use an alternative payment system will pay a 17 percent commission (rather than 30 percent) on digital goods and services. For Apple apps that qualify for the reduced “small business” rate, the commission rate has fallen to 10 percent. The fee increases if developers choose to use Apple’s payment processing system.

Apple has continued to take a cut when it’s been forced to allow third-party payments in the past. In response to a US ruling that said Apple had to allow links to outside payments, the iPhone maker said it would allow developers to link out but said it would continue to charge a 27 percent commission (as opposed to 30 percent). It’s also taken a similar approach in South Korea and the Netherlands.

According to reports, the European Commission is investigating whether iMessage should be included in the core platform service designation, even though it is unlikely to be.

Sweeney is just getting started and will have more to say about Apple’s EU policies. “There’s a lot more hot garbage in Apple’s announcement,” he says. “It will take more time to parse both the written and unwritten parts of this new horror show, so stay tuned.”

Epic, which operates the Epic Games Store as well as the game Fortnite, has been one of the companies calling most loudly for these kinds of changes. It fought a long-running legal battle against Apple’s “walled garden” approach to the App Store in the US.

Still, this is the structure that Apple is offering for now, and the possibilities for iOS developers and the ecosystem at large are huge. If they want to push through Apple’s multimillion cent fee structure, one of them has to make the jump.

The conversation isn’t necessarily over. The European Commission will review Apple’s new rules once enforcement of the DMA goes into effect in March. If regulators feel that something in Apple’s plan is against the law, they could push back. This fee is a bigger issue than the other issues that critics will point to.

For a big company, the price could be worth it. For the past decade or so, Apple has made it impossible for Spotify to make in-app purchases of products such as audiobooks or subscribe in its app. It would more than make up for 50 euro cents per year if they were to convert a free user to a paying one. But it’s a gamble: a lot of users still won’t pay a dime, and Spotify will have to pay for them anyway. The company will need to size up whether tens of millions of dollars in download fees can be offset by the gains it would make from new subscriptions and purchases.

Developers that care enough to escape Apple’s fees will have to find a way to compel users to put in this effort. If the only way to download the Amazon app is through the Amazon Appstore (currently Android only), then users will eventually find their way to Amazon’s website and figure it out — Amazon is a big enough draw to make it worth the time. But if Amazon remains available through Apple’s store, too, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would bother.

Once apps are popular, the real caveat comes into play. Every new user of the app is charged a 50 euro cent fee for every installation over a million installs, and this fee is charged every year. The app updates count as installations, too. Since no major app goes more than a year without an update, that effectively means any sufficiently popular app is going to be indefinitely paying Apple 50 euro cents per user per year, above that initial 1 million. It’s not just apps, either. Third-party app stores must also pay Apple 50 euro cents per user per year, and they do not receive the 1 million install grace that apps do.

Here is some back-of- the-napkin math. Europe has 408 million monthly users on Facebook, which is divided into the following: web,Android,iOS, etc. The market for mobile phones in Europe is dominated by the Apple product. Meta would pay Apple 67.5 million per year for a third of Facebook’s users to use the iPhone app. And there’d be another fee for WhatsApp, another for Instagram, another for Messenger, and so on. That number is also just for active users. Meta would also have to pay for people who installed the app years ago and never open it up but still get automatic updates.

There are two more complications in all of this: a company has to launch a third-party app store, and developers then have to migrate their users over to that store. And Apple does not make it easy for apps to shift users from one store to another. A user must first install the new app store, then uninstall the old version of the app that was downloaded through Apple’s App Store, and finally, reinstall the app through the new app store.

The company also calls out the 17 percent commission that Apple will still take from the developers who choose to use third-party payment processors. This will make a “developer’s choice between the status quo and this new program as difficult as possible,” Spotify adds. While Spotify revealed plans to roll out its own in-app payment system in the EU this week, it seems unlikely this will pan out.

Testut told The Verge that it was reasonable for Apple to ask for a 1,000,000 letter of credit. Testut says that running an alternative marketplace comes with a strong responsibility to protect users and that it does raise the barrier for entry. It is recommended that marketplaces have proof of credit to ensure that they are legit and to reduce the risk of marketplaces taking everyones money and leaving.

“As a whole, I view this as positive for the platform,” Testut says. There are completely new classes of apps that can exist on the platform for the first time.

Everyone is likely to adopt Apple’s new guidelines no matter what the potential drawbacks are. AltStore, an app store that lets users on iOS sideload apps, already has plans to officially launch its app store in the EU. AltStore developer Riley Testut tells The Verge that it’s working toward meeting Apple’s requirements so it can allow users to download AltStore directly from their website. Testut says that developers will be able to publish their apps for free on AltStore and that they have made it easier for developers to distribute their Patreon-exclusive apps. We don’t charge a commission on Patreon-exclusive apps.

Other developers remain skeptical of the new changes as well. Paul Haddad, the co-founder of Tapbots, tells The Verge that “any reduction in the, overly high, commissions that Apple charges is a benefit for developers.” Haddad thinks Apple’s Core Technology Fee is “unlikely to work” for freemium apps, as well as those that offer demos. “I’m not interested in risking losing money on each and every app install/update in order to save a little money on folks that actually do subscribe to our app,” Haddad says.

Andy Yen, the founder and CEO of Swiss encrypted email and VPN provider, Proton, stated that the new fees and restrictions reinforce Apple’s hold over its ecosystems.