Why does patreon really have to be an app though? It works just fine as a mobile site and it doesn't do anything complex that would require it to be an app.
And this goes for most services with an app, the main reason they have apps (and try to force their users to use those) is to collect more data from the user as an app has more opportunity to do this than a mobile site.
Of course for a supposedly 'noble cause' app like patreon they shouldn't be doing this at all in the first place.
I’ll note their app actually sucks at least for reading serial fiction from a few people I subscribe to.
What does require an app though is sending notifications. As a result I have their app just to receive notifications of new chapter releases, then go read the post on the website.
If Apple stopped locking this functionality into applications then something like Patreon could just be a website that you pin on your homescreen.
Now another alternative is email notifications but I will tell you email sucks and most people won’t bother with it. If I start allowing notifications from my mail client I’ll get a ton of notifications that I don’t give a crap about. There is a real spam problem there which application based notifications don’t have.
And this goes for most services with an app, the main reason they have apps (and try to force their users to use those) is to collect more data from the user as an app has more opportunity to do this than a mobile site.
Of course for a supposedly 'noble cause' app like patreon they shouldn't be doing this at all in the first place.