> Why didn't they just incrementally increase API pricing or implement policies that slowly kill off 3rd party apps one at a time?
I guess that the goal is not to kill all the 3rd party apps, but only those that make profit from the Reddit API (which doesn't include their advertising if I understand well). Now assuming that a progressive price increase would be put in place, I guess that these apps would simply offload the API tax to their user base with each new raise. As it has been mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, with an abrupt price raise in a very short time, the apps would not have enough treasury to be able to "buffer" the cost until the users pick the pace up - assuming users would, which is perhaps a more important (read: long term) worry.
It should be observed that the goal is not to kill off all 3rd party apps, since there are special exemptions for non commercial apps. I don't know if these exemptions are actually useable in practice, or if actually this is just a part of a larger scheme to get rid of all those apps while having a plausible line of deniability.
It is certainly sad for iOS users as Apollo seems to be their only option besides the web site, but I wonder why they did not see that coming miles away. Maybe they did expect a price to show up at some point, but not with such a magnitude.
I guess that the goal is not to kill all the 3rd party apps, but only those that make profit from the Reddit API (which doesn't include their advertising if I understand well). Now assuming that a progressive price increase would be put in place, I guess that these apps would simply offload the API tax to their user base with each new raise. As it has been mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, with an abrupt price raise in a very short time, the apps would not have enough treasury to be able to "buffer" the cost until the users pick the pace up - assuming users would, which is perhaps a more important (read: long term) worry.
It should be observed that the goal is not to kill off all 3rd party apps, since there are special exemptions for non commercial apps. I don't know if these exemptions are actually useable in practice, or if actually this is just a part of a larger scheme to get rid of all those apps while having a plausible line of deniability.
It is certainly sad for iOS users as Apollo seems to be their only option besides the web site, but I wonder why they did not see that coming miles away. Maybe they did expect a price to show up at some point, but not with such a magnitude.