Reddit is shutting down Apollo; due to the company’s recent decision to overcharge its third-party developers for API access.
Apollo, Reddit’s most popular iOS application, will be discontinued due to its new API price, making it prohibitively costly to operate.
The developer Christian Selig stated that the app will be discontinued on June 30. “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo,” tweeted Selig.
Selig was prolific on Reddit. He reiterated that the API fees for Reddit would cost him over $20 million annually to operate the service. “From a free API for eight years to suddenly incurring enormous costs is not something I can make work in 30 days,” Selig said. That’s a large number of users to migrate, plans to develop, and app reviews to conduct. There is also a need to be more economically feasible. “Closing is less costly for me.”
Selig stated that Reddit’s claims that Apollo is “less efficient” than other applications are false, as Apollo consumes only a fraction of Reddit’s API rate limits.
The Apollo developer’s article also links to an incomplete audio recording of Selig’s conversation with a Reddit employee. It demonstrates that he never demanded $10 million from Reddit. The audio file suggests Selig was joking, but he claims Reddit CEO Steve Huffman accuses him of causing injury to the company.
Tim Rathschmidt, a representative for Reddit, declined to comment but promised to provide additional information on Thursday and Friday. Huffman will facilitate an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on API enhancements, accessibility, mod bots, and third-party mod tools on Friday.
Reddit’s largest communities, including r/gaming, r/Music, r/Pics, r/todayilearned, r/art, r/DIY, r/EarthPorn, r/explainlikeimfive, r/gadgets, r/LifeProTips, will prohibit new posts or go silent on June 12 to protest the platform’s API pricing increases.
Reddit claimed it would exempt accessible app developers from its Tuesday API pricing increase in response to the protest. Still, it does not appear to have made any accommodations to save Apollo.
“Apollo should continue to operate normally” until Selig deletes Apollo’s API key “on the evening of June 30, Pacific Time.” Selig plans to grant Apollo subscribers a prorated refund for the remaining time on their subscriptions “in the coming weeks.”
