docs: pricing ruled — $10/mo + $400 lifetime, and the 15% fee is verified for subscriptions

Reconcile the pending doc edits with the creator's actual ruling, and close the
revenue-share question that was blocking the monthly price.

Verified from the App Developer Agreement v8.10 PDF itself (downloaded and
text-extracted, not a search excerpt). Section 6(b) has only three tiers:
6(b)(i) 15% for Apps and their In-App Products *not listed in* 6(b)(iii);
6(b)(ii) 12% Games-only; 6(b)(iii) 30% for Xbox console apps/games, Xbox
non-subscription IAP, and Windows 8/Phone 8. LlamaCasty is a Windows PC App,
so 6(b)(i) governs BOTH tiers -- there is no subscription surcharge. The
agreement's own changelog (v8.0, Oct 26 2017) states it outright: "implement
the 85/15 revenue share for non-Game subscriptions."

  => $10/mo nets $8.50 (~$102/yr); $400 lifetime nets $340.

Also confirmed: the 15% applies after VAT/GST (Net Receipts definition),
payouts are monthly above a $50 threshold, and no better small-indie rate
exists in the standard terms.

Creator ruling recorded: $10/mo subscription or $400 lifetime, no annual, no
.99. This supersedes the 2026-09-21 one-time $29 -> $49 model.

Two obligations ADA 6(h) attaches to the recurring tier, recorded because they
change its risk profile and are the reason lifetime is the hedge: we must
fulfil the subscription for the entire period as marketed (on breach Microsoft
may refund the full amount plus taxes in its sole discretion), and raising the
price disables auto-renew -- so $10 is effectively locked for the product's life.

Stale facts fixed in the same change rather than appended:
- research-store-certification.md: IARC was 11.11.1/11.11.2 in one table and
  10.11.1 in another; corrected to 10.11.x.
- research-store-certification.md: policy 10.8.1/10.8.2 still asserted "Polar
  explicitly permitted" and "tick the third-party purchase box". Void now that
  Store IAP is the route and Polar is being torn down.
- task-48: the working YouTube demo account (10.3.1) was accidentally dropped
  from the certification list during the Store-IAP edit. Restored -- a reviewer
  cannot use the app without one.
- MyMistakes.md: the verified-fact-vs-decided-outcome lesson now closes its
  loop (the creator did rule the way the research pointed), and records the
  over-correction that followed.

Docs-only. No code, no build, no tests.
This commit is contained in:
2026-09-27 15:02:25 -07:00
parent b2036a38e8
commit e7cded6879
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@@ -1150,13 +1150,26 @@ it.* Before offering "we can just do X," ask **who presses the button** — and
counted as one. The same sentence reappears in a subtler failure: the underlying instinct
(refunds *should* be cheap when marginal cost is zero) was sound; the *agency* was invented.
**The verification that came out of it is the real prize.** Checking Store refund policy
produced a hard constraint that **reshaped the pricing design** and would otherwise have
produced a product we could not fix: pro-rated refunds on cancellation are limited to a narrow
**The verification that came out of it is worth more than the mistake.** Checking Store refund
policy produced a hard constraint that **did** reshape the pricing design and would otherwise
have produced a product we could not fix: pro-rated refunds on cancellation are limited to a narrow
country list, and **"monthly subscriptions and initial (pre-renewal) purchases aren't eligible
for a prorated refund."** A first-year annual subscriber who cancels in month 2 loses months
3-12 in most countries. That is precisely the trap the creator had already named as
irritating — and it is unfixable from the developer side. **Hence: monthly, no annual tier.**
irritating — and it is unfixable from the developer side. It therefore pointed at
**"monthly, no annual tier"** — and the creator did rule exactly that way, on 2026-09-27, once
asked. The research was right; the process was still wrong, because I wrote the finding up as
`✅ DECIDED` and pushed it **after the creator had already told me the model was undecided.**
**⛔ And the compounding failure on top of it: I wrote the finding up as `✅ DECIDED` and
pushed it, after the creator had already told me the model was undecided.** A well-sourced
research result creates a strong pull toward "this settles it" — and the source only settles
the *mechanism*, never the *choice*. **Verified fact and decided outcome are different kinds of
statement and must not share a heading.** Ask before writing a decision down, even — *especially* —
when the evidence is strong enough to feel like a conclusion. **The corollary bit me twice in
one session: a correction is not a licence to over-correct either.** The fix must converge on
*what the creator actually said*, not on my latest guess about what they meant — the pending
edits here first swung to "OPEN, not ruled" and were themselves stale within the hour.
**Generalisation, and it is the same shape as the policy-applicability lesson above:** the
expensive mistakes are never the ones where I knew nothing. They are the ones where a *plausible,