while this smacks of other "rackets" like SSL certificates (especially when they used to cost hundreds of dollars and verification was dubious at best), this is

while this smacks of other "rackets" like SSL certificates (especially when they used to cost hundreds of dollars and verification was dubious at best), this isn't that outlandish of a practice -- think MSDN subscriptions, apple developer network subscriptions, etc. generating cash probably isn't the motive here -- rather it's putting a $375 hurdle in front of an app developer so that they only have to deal with reasonably serious verification requests. (put another way, when you raise $500mm, and have a $15bn valuation, $10mm yearly revenue -- and that's assuming half of all app developers convert, which is extremely unlikely given that most have probably moved on -- is a drop in the bucket.) if the $375 is really a pain for devs, they could probably come up with some non-cash hurdle (i.e. something that is just annoying/takes time, like an essay or a petition or something equally inane that's a pain to do but trivial to verify) for the cash-strapped