Apple's App Store Steering Rules: A Quiet Shift in the Payments Game
Late on Thursday, Apple announced refinements to its App Store policies, with the headline change concerning "steering"—the practice of informing customers about out-of-app transaction options. The move is incremental, not the dramatic overhaul some developers have lobbied for, but its likely impact on the ecosystem, particularly games, is easy to underestimate.
The change neither permits developers to pitch users on out-of-band payments within the app itself, nor does it return to the status quo ante of this summer, when Apple announced it would rigorously enforce rules against steering transactions off-platform. To understand why this matters, consider that roughly 60% of App Store revenue comes from games—and game developers are uniquely skilled at incentivizing incremental user behavior.
The Gacha Engine: Virtual Currency and User Motivation
Gacha games, named after Japanese vending machines that dispense random trinkets, have become a dominant monetization model. Games like MiHoYo's Genshin Impact gate content—typically characters—behind random draws, purchasable with both limited free currency and paid currency. This system naturally encourages "whales," high spenders who may probabilistically spend surprisingly large amounts in small increments.
What makes this model relevant is that these games are extraordinarily good at using linked rewards to train user behavior. Genshin Impact has several hundred currencies, with primogems being the one that converts into gacha pulls. Early on, players are taught to perform actions for primogems: open a chest, get two; complete a daily commission, get 40.
This behavioral conditioning extends beyond game mechanics. The game's companion character Paimon regularly sends in-game emails directing players to complete tasks—even something as mundane as a customer satisfaction survey—in exchange for primogems. The character could be employed in any B2B SaaS marketing department and crush her KPIs, because unlike a typical marketer, she has infinite virtual gold to incentivize uptake.
Steering Payments: The Trivial Next Step
The new policy explicitly permits developers to collect users' contact information in-app and pitch them on payments out-of-app. For game companies, this is a core competence already in practice—it's trivial to imagine them incentivizing different purchasing choices.
Consider the standardized free-to-play screen presenting paid currency packages. On Genshin Impact, this screen is identical across Windows and iPhone, with the team having heavily played with packaging options to push users toward larger purchases. Under prior guidance, users who created accounts after downloading from an app store could be locked into purchasing only through that store's payment system.
Even on unlocked platforms like Windows, there was little reason to visit the website for purchases; it was functional. But now imagine a small tweak to daily quests, emails, and notifications.
Paimon wants to write you a letter. Give us your email address here. Privacy policy applies. Reward: 20 primogems.
Twenty primogems has an implicit cash value of roughly 25 cents, but costs the game's virtual currency issuer nothing to mint. Follow that with an email containing a themed request to visit a newly revamped web purchasing experience—one that has received designer attention and offers, almost inevitably, a 10% discount on in-app prices.
The margin impact is substantial: improving the margin on currency purchases from roughly 70% to 85% is a ~20% lift from a single engineering sprint. For a game that has transacted over a billion dollars through app stores, the revenue team's incentive is massive—delays cost millions per week.
Relaunch Windows and Direct-to-Consumer Services
This mechanism extends beyond gacha games. Games selling cosmetic skins can offer a bonus for purchasing through their site. Content releases can be "windowed" for direct sales before appearing in-app, exploiting the spikey launch-window behavior common in games. This yields outsized margin impacts even when both prices are identical.
Traditional license-model apps may see less benefit, but service-based developers—who feel that after a multi-month customer relationship, paying a perpetual finder's fee is unjustified—stand to gain. B2B services like Basecamp, which has been vocal about the inability to sell SaaS accounts while maintaining an iOS app for its Hey email product, will likely experiment with steering customers direct.
The spillover effects on other ecosystems could be significant. Apple established a Schelling point on the 30% take rate, and other platform owners have either matched it or positioned in opposition. As Apple's policies shift, other ecosystems' decisions will likely follow.
This is a vibrant market for different ways to pay and be paid. Whether it is "sporting" to pay users to change transactional behavior is a separate question—but it's not unprecedented. Payment ecosystems compete fiercely for share of wallet, through ergonomics, branding, perceptions of trust, and concrete economic inducements. Rewards cards are a prime example: companies maintain whale-like customers by rebating a portion of their spend. All's fair in love, war, and payments.
