Apple secured a 15% cut from Tencent’s WeChat Mini Game IAPs

📰 Apple & Tencent’s “Peace Treaty” is Here:

The big news: Apple has reportedly secured a 15% cut from Tencent’s WeChat Mini Game IAPs.

This isn’t just a fee; it’s a new era.

– Apple turns a 0% loophole into a massive new revenue stream, showing strategic flexibility amid antitrust pressure.

– Tencent pays for stability. It removes the risk of a WeChat ban on iOS and legitimizes its mini-game platform.

🤔 What This Means for Us Developers
For developers and publishers in the WeChat Mini Game space, it’s a classic tradeoff.

📉 The Bad: Our margins just shrank. 15% is a significant new cost.

📈 The Good: The “grey area” is gone. We finally have clear rules for iOS, ending the uncertainty that held back major investment.

Stability has a price.

Is this new clarity worth the 15% cost?

“A Tencent spokesperson declined to comment, and Apple didn’t reply to requests in time.

Apple is taking a 15 per cent cut here, which is half of what it normally charges developers for in-app purchases. Still, this gives Apple a solid entry into China’s booming mini-game market. These bite-sized WeChat games – inside an app used by 1.41 billion people monthly – brought in 32.3 billion yuan (about S$5.9 billion) in social network revenue for Tencent in the September quarter.

Back in August, Tencent said it had been in talks with Apple to establish “economically sustainable” and fair terms for sharing revenue from mini-games and apps sold on iPhones.”