> just charge them for development tools
Thing is, Apple still charges $100 USD per year for a developer license which lets you distribute your app, so this is already happening! :)
Thing is, Apple still charges $100 USD per year for a developer license which lets you distribute your app, so this is already happening! :)
From the court documents, Apple said there are 27M AppStore registered devs. Even if only half of those pay $100 per year that's still about $1.3B per year.
Edit:
It's even worse than with consoles as every dev needs at least a Mac. When developing for consoles most work is not done on the dev kit itself.
Google asks for $25, once, for a team that can be an individual or an organization, as you wish.
That is less than the coffee bean budget for a month at most of these organizations. They probably spend more than that a year on parts and labor for the coffee equipment.
That organization fee is a token fee. A little friction so that it makes you serious and it stings a bit if it gets cancelled. To maybe not faff about and get down to shipping a product. A few bucks to cover things like CA maintenance and help fund some outreach programs I suspect.
$100 for individuals might be a bit on the steep side, I'll grant you. Or a stick to get you to become an organization as soon as possible.
There is a second program called the Apple Developer Enterprise Program, which is $299 per year, and is only required if you wish to deploy apps for internal use across your organization without using the App Store.