Reddit Third-party App Apollo to Cease Operations on June 30th

The creator of Apollo has announced the shutdown of the third-party client due to Reddit’s controversial move to charge for API access. Christian Selig took to Twitter to reveal that Apollo will cease operations on June 30th, citing Reddit’s recent decisions and actions as the reason for the closure. Selig expressed disappointment that Apollo could no longer continue under the circumstances.

Selig, who is the only developer working on Apollo, sounded the alarm about the changes last week. He estimated it would cost him about $20 million a year to keep the app running under Reddit’s new rules, which are set to go into effect June 19.

In a post on Reddit, Selig accused the company of defaming him during calls with some of the site’s moderators following an alleged misunderstanding. He allegedly told Reddit that if a large number of API calls from Apollo were costing the company a significant amount of money (ie about $20 million a year), “I suggested you cut me a check to shut down Apollo. I said I’d do it for up to half of that, or six months worth: 10 million dollars.”

Selig said Reddit representatives apologized for taking his remarks as some kind of threat. Nevertheless, he claimed CEO Steve Huffman told the moderators that “Apollo threatened us, said they would ‘make it easy’ if Reddit gave them $10 million… This guy behind the scenes is forcing us. He’s threatening us.”

Apollo’s developer suggested that these claims were the final nail in the coffin for his app. “I don’t want Reddit to slander me to internal employees or public people saying I threatened them when the reality is they immediately apologized for my misunderstanding,” he wrote. “I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I don’t think this situation is fixable.” Selig said he was unlikely to sell Apollo, which has about 50,000 subscribers who paid an average of $10 a year.

Reddit declined to comment on the situation to ReturnByte at the time of publication. The company said it would provide more information later today and tomorrow.

Community backlash against the API changes quickly followed Reddit’s announcement. The company pushed back against them to some extent by offering the API for free to operators of some accessibility apps. Nevertheless, Moderators of many major subreddits plan to be unavailable for at least 48 hours to protest the changes. Critics argue that the new rules will make the platform inaccessible to many users.