Comment by VengefulCynic

  Smile is doing this because they have to

100% agree. I feel that a lot of the commentary on this (mine included) has left out the fact that Smile is a classy company owned by a classy bunch of developers that have always done well by the community. They sponsor podcasts, they provide top-notch Mac/iOS apps, and they do excellent customer service. If they've changed their cost structure to $50/yr/customer, it doesn't reflect well on the App Store's monetization model.