Heh. Seriously, this is (at least for me, and presumably for every other tiny indie developer) one of the huge attractions of storefronts like Steam and the iOS App Store: I'll just give you a license to sell my works, and you send me the royalties. I'll gladly give them a 30% cut to avoid all that bullshit.
Incidentally, the Google Play store does not do this. Each developer is the merchant of record. I can only imagine that nearly every smaller business selling through Google has neglected to pay at least some sales taxes that they owe.
Having a developer calculate tax seems odd. Does this mean every single developer who puts a paid app on android store needs to figure out the intricacies of digital download tax for every single state / country? Sure big companies can hire someone to do it but that seems excessive for an individual developer.
Piracy isn't google's fault. It's a byproduct of having a system that is at least a little bit more open than others like iOS. This isn't munch different than the situation developers face with piracy on a PC.
Otherwise, this is a big win for small developers. Most developers probably don't approach the $1M cap, and all of them will see their fees drastically reduced.
Of course I'm cynical enough to view this mostly as a defensive measure against monopoly concerns, but that doesn't mean there's no benefit for many developers.
What do you believe, with respect to the app store, would be a more developer-friendly change? I'd like to see then allow developers to use different payment providers and not fight against alternate app stores that much. However for things that go through the play store even with a different payment provider, I think Google deserves some small cut for hosting all these apps and providing the platform. Something like a one-time fee for all paid apps or apps with paid content. It seems reasonable to pay them for use of their infrastructure in some form. Apps that make use of less of it-- like not using it's payment system-- would pay less.
Prior to the App Store, indie software developers using turnkey online solutions from eSellerate, Kagi and others were typically only paying around 10% - and this included all the VAT/TAX handling for the EU and different US states.
>Apple/Google, who leverage OS API control into a tax on all activity, do nothing and get $1.50.
Except they offer you a channel for distribution, discoverability, promotion, rating and monetization of your app.
On Android you don't have to serve your app over Google Play you can distribute .apk file elsewhere and pay 0% fee but on iOS unfortunately you can not do that.
Isn't 30% standard across pretty much every App Store? Steam does not have lock in and yet I thought charged 30%, GoG is 30%, etc.
Obviously other app stores could in principle charge lower amounts because they don't actually have to do any development work, unlike google or apple who both actually do real development work for products after they've been sold. Despite that GoG and Steam seem to charge 30% anyway.
I'm curious what you think the development model for companies that aren't just store fronts should be if they aren't able to make money from development, especially given they appear to be charging that same amount as those companies that aren't doing anything other than providing a store front? Maybe software updates should cost money again? Or you should only get one year of updates for a device? Maybe free apps should be banned as well? After all supporting those costs money but makes none?
I'm genuinely curious how you think development should be paid for when 15-30% is too high for developers but fine for store fronts?
App Store & Google Play charging this fee is like Google charging your website in order to show up in Google results. The app stores are not great due to their investments, they are great due to the awesome apps developers have built
the average is skewed by games like Genshin Impact with gross exploitative monetization, not to mention literal casino games. So smaller developers with more reasonable monetization are not getting anywhere close to those averages and will be punished hard by these fees, especially because it's per-install not per-user.
If a user installs your F2P mobile game on 2-3 devices (not uncommon), you now owe 40-60 cents, not 20. Hope your average revenue is good enough that you can afford that after Apple/Google take their 30%.
The developer's fee is for the SDK and other software. It has nothing to do with the store. Why this is confused feels very disingenuous to me. No vendor selling product through a 3rd party store EVER receives 100% of the retail price. They always sell at wholesale which is a much steeper rate than 30%
For a site filled with developers y’all really misunderstand the whole 30% cut thing.
It’s an alternate way to pay for API, sdk, and platform access.
Before the era of phones, if you wanted to develop for some kind of gated platform, for example video game consoles, one would have to pay very high SDK fees. Fees that would scale based on licensed seat, enterprise size, and more. Then when you ship, you’d pay royalties on a per item basis. You sold a game cartridge or cd? Great, a portion of your sale prices goes back to Sony/Nintendo/whatever.
If Apple and google were to provide un-marked up card services, they’d probably charge 3-5% like stripe: there’s a certain amount of fraud that would be priced in.
Then they would charge for dev tools. A lot. They’d probably charge for API or SDK usage, perhaps tied to the sales volume and enterprise size.
But instead they give the tools away for free, and charge at point of delivery.
I think the current situation is actually a great deal for developers: you get access to an always improving platform, it’s free for personal/hobby use, and if you make sales, you get paid. And the first $X is fee reduced/free. And it’s a highly available distribution platform that scales world wide. Good luck getting your Indy game into every brick and mortar store.
The world is really different, and way way better, for developers. This Spotify announcement is great for users, it’s handy to have all your subscriptions in one platform. And not having to sign up on a desktop or outside the app flow.
That’s only if you publish through the App Store. A developer who publishes on their own website doesn’t pay any percentage fee, though they do pay 100$ a year for the developer account which allows to sign and notarise the app. A developer who publishes on Steam pays 30% to Valve.
You know that in Android, if you as a developer use in app purchases, you have to pay a cut to the play store, right? But the thing is, you can also do payments on your own (although users are much less likely to trust you), in which case there is no cut. This is why I can buy a book in Kindle on my android phone, but no on my dad's ipod.
That's what people are asking for. If you want to provide services, sure, charge for them, but also allow developers to not use your services in this case.
Apples monopoly enforcement in both this and in html rendering is one of the biggest causes of stagnation in tech right now.
When I run a web app, sure, I need to pay lots of different middle men. But I get to choose which ones I use.
Google already do charge, don't they? From memory there was a one-off $25 fee to sign up to sell on the Play Store.
But even if they did, it wouldn't contribute significantly to the company's revenue - not sure how many developers Google has, but Apple has 380,000 registered developers[1], and even if they all pay $99/yr, that's 'only' $38 Million. Against Google's approx $60 Billion revenue[2], that doesn't move the needle at all.
You are conveniently ignoring that developers create apps which are sold in Google's marketplace, of which Google takes a minimum of 15%. They are making more per developer than $25. Please take your inflammatory nonsense elsewhere.
I think this point of the argument has been unfortunately lost in the kerfuffle over whether charging for apps (or app installs, to split hairs) is a viable business model.
It should be fine for a developer (or musician, or other creator of content) to charge for their wares. If the app being available really is valueless or if the prospective customer doesn't believe it's worth what's being asked, they are free to move along and select a different product or to develop their own. I'm not sure why this concept is so looked down upon.
Google Play store has a 25$ one-time fee. Much more affordable IMHO than 99$ annual fee. If I am being charged a 99$ fee, I simply can't share my creation without finding a way to make money off of my users. That isn't easy. Future hobbyists will be created on non-Apple platforms.
Incidentally, the Google Play store does not do this. Each developer is the merchant of record. I can only imagine that nearly every smaller business selling through Google has neglected to pay at least some sales taxes that they owe.
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