Shopify Native Feature Causes 100% Revenue Drop for Third-Party App

A recent social media post has highlighted the significant platform risk faced by developers, detailing how Shopify's introduction of a native feature led to the complete collapse of a third-party application. Jason Zigelbaum, creator of the "Metafields Manager" app, reportedly saw his product's revenue plummet to zero within weeks after Shopify integrated similar functionality directly into its platform. This incident underscores the precarious position of businesses built on large ecosystems when the platform itself decides to offer competing services.Metafields Manager was a popular Shopify app designed to help merchants manage custom data fields, a crucial capability for extending Shopify's default data model. The app provided a vital service, allowing e-commerce businesses to customize their stores beyond standard options. Its success demonstrated a clear market need for advanced metafield management tools within the Shopify ecosystem.However, the situation changed dramatically when Shopify rolled out native support for metafields in late 2020 and early 2021. This update allowed merchants to add custom fields directly within the Shopify admin, aiming to simplify data management and reduce reliance on external solutions. As Pascal Levy-Garboua noted in a tweet, "> Shopify killed his app overnight. Literally."The direct competition from Shopify's integrated feature effectively rendered Metafields Manager obsolete. Levy-Garboua further stated, "> Jason Zigelbaum had built a successful product called Metafields Manager, until Shopify released the same feature natively. Revenue dropped to zero in weeks." This rapid decline illustrates the profound impact platform decisions can have on independent developers.This event serves as a stark reminder of the inherent platform risk for developers operating within large ecosystems. While Shopify aims to foster a thriving developer community, its priority for merchant experience sometimes involves integrating popular functionalities natively. This dynamic often forces third-party app creators to constantly innovate and differentiate their offerings, or risk being marginalized by the platform they depend on.