A week before launch of an SVOD product I worked on, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we

A week before launch of an SVOD product I worked on, Apple chose to reject us in spite of months of meetings and reviews with their app teams and assurances we were in-bounds since we were working with them for launch featuring. It came down to the fact we required an email address and password for IAP so you could bring your subscription to the web or other platforms. While everyone else in the category did this, they decided that policy was going to change and we were just going to be the first people to deal with it. Since having an email-based account was core to the architecture and the UX, I went through a week of refactor hell to make emails/passwords optional to meet our launch date. Since other apps still get to do this, it's clear the policy change message was BS. I've suspected a lot has had to do with Apple's ambitions in the streaming space and their desire to be in a position to offer bundling and other over the top services. They're already trying to control the UX with the TV app and are offering companies better rev share rates to do the integration work. Cutting back from 30% is how Apple incentivizes even heavier integration into their ecosystem. Apple keeps doing this: Google and the Google Phone app, Netflix, Spotify, my product...more that we haven't even heard of, since not many are as big as the ones I've mentioned. The idea that this is somehow about protecting the consumer rings hollow.