Third-party iOS Reddit app Narwhal has launched a $4-per-month subscription plan that may go into impact within the subsequent week or two. Developer Announce Plans Tuesday on Reddit (via the sting). The pricing is designed to permit the developer to cowl Reddit’s broadly disparaged API payment spike, which led to mass on-line protests earlier this yr and the shutdown of beloved consumer Apollo.
The app developer, who goes by the deal with u/det0ur on Reddit, wrote that pricing was “undoubtedly an experiment” as he tried to maintain his app afloat. “If I needed to, I would transfer on to another plans,” the Narwhal creator wrote. “However I need to attempt that first.”
The developer had beforehand introduced tiered pricing based mostly on customers’ API calls, however u/det0ur scrapped that after realizing how difficult that may be for customers. “(Let’s) be actual, a 2003 cellphone plan with monitored utilization is not nice,” the developer stated books In a separate article from final week. “Who needs to fret about what an API name is? To not point out how a lot it is going to price.”
Nonetheless, API calls are an unavoidable monetary actuality for third-party builders hoping to supply customers a substitute for the official Reddit consumer. Reddit revealed the malicious API modifications this spring, prompting Apollo developer Christian Selig to say that the up to date pricing would price him $20 million to maintain the app working “as is.” Greater than 6,000 subreddits went darkish in protest of the modifications, however (not like Unity’s current retreat) Reddit caught to its heels and weathered the storm, resulting in Apollo’s shutdown and compelled reopening of communities that continued to protest.
Customers who change to Narwhal appear pleased with the worth and utility. “The customization choices are nice; I used to be capable of ‘rebuild’ Apollo as intently as potential,” u/Neryuslu wrote. “You are the primary developer ever to get a month-to-month subscription from me. I’ve rejected that mannequin to this point, however on this case it is clearly completely different. It is nonetheless unhealthy sufficient to pay Reddit this fashion not directly. Fuck you, Spyz,” they wrote. , referring to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
(TagsFor translation) Reddit