Creator Christian Selig said Reddit’s API changes made it ‘impossible for Apollo to continue.’
Reddit’s controversial decision to charge for API access has led the creator of Apollo to shut down the third-party client. “Apollo will close down on June 30th,” Christian Selig wrote on Twitter. “Reddit’s recent decisions and actions have unfortunately made it impossible for Apollo to continue.”
Selig, who is the only developer working on Apollo, sounded the alarm bell about the changes last week. He estimated that keeping the app running as is under Reddit’s new rules, which are set to take effect on June 19th, would cost him around $20 million per year.
In a post on Reddit, Selig accused the company of slandering him during calls with some of the site’s moderators following an alleged misunderstanding. He claimed to have told Reddit that, if a high volume of API calls from Apollo was costing the company a significant amount of money (i.e. in the region of $20 million per year), “I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I’d even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million.”
Selig said Reddit representatives apologized for misunderstanding his remarks as a threat of some kind. Even so, he claimed CEO Steve Huffman told moderators that “Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million … This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He’s threatening us.”
The Apollo developer suggested these allegations were the final nail in the coffin for his app. “I don’t want Reddit slandering me to internal employees or public people by saying I threatened them when they reality is that they immediately apologized for misunderstanding me,” he wrote. “I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I don’t think this situation is recoverable.” Selig said he likely won’t sell Apollo, which has around 50,000 subscribers who were paying an average of $10 per year.
Reddit declined to comment on the situation to Engadget at the time of publication. The company said it would provide more information later today and tomorrow.
There was a swift backlash against the API changes from the community after Reddit announced them. The company backtracked on them to a certain degree by making the API available for free to the operators of some accessibility apps. Nevertheless, the moderators of many major subreddits are planning to make them unavailable for at least 48 hours to protest the changes. Critics claim the new rules will make the platform inaccessible for many users.