why is it wild? Microsoft keeps 30% of xbox store sales. Apple, Google, MS, etc. play a massive part in attracting users to the platform.
Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every transaction.
I would bet Apple has put more into R&D for iPhones, iPads and iOS than the entire enterprise value of visa and mastercard put together. If anything, they've worked for it more than visa/mastercard who are merely rails with distribution. Most of the heavy lifting, risk and work in the card ecosystem is done by the issuers (banks et. al.)
They built it to sell something else, operating systems and then some ancillary stuff. They became one of the most valuable companies in the world off just that.
Just like the iOS was built to sell phones. They make plenty off phones. They’ve made Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world too. Access to an App Store has become a requirement of a modern phone, so they wouldn’t sell many without it. But it doesn’t mean they should be able to tax the entire economy so heavily. Just like how running a browser is a requirement of modern browsers for an operating system, but that doesn’t mean the operating system should be allowed to tax the entire economy of activity that takes place on said operating system.
And it would be morally wrong to put that costs on the app developers, without their apps the store is useless.
The lack of apps killed Windows Phone.
And you pay for that when you buy the device. That does not justify paying Apple huge percentage each time when you are paying for an app.
Visa and mastercard are logistical masterpieces.
Think of how much legal work needs to be done in order to be compliant in every country in the world.
I suppose that is just another way of describing "legal work" in this context.
The 27% are seen similar to Sony and Nintendo as fees to be on a platform which has wide reach but also gives tools and does stuff to enable app distribution.
Is that too much? I don‘t know but it‘s what all appear to do. The platform politics didn‘t evolve as fast as the tech though. So what about apps like Patreon, Netflix, Spotify, that was never on the table in 2008.
They do, which is why credit cards take that much, cost of chargebacks is a part of the transaction fee.
So if within their own industry Visa and Mastercard overcharge like crazy, especially when they can, what makes you so sure that they’re a good counter example for a completely different industry? Especially when competitors seem to be charging a very similar rate for a similar service?
That being said, it is a fair point when you consider that retailers and other similar product middle men tend to charge 1-3%, but it’s important to also consider that Apple position’s itself as a luxury product and brand where 30% markup isn’t actually out of line.
Not suggesting that this warrants a 30% cut, but unlike payment gateways Apple also provides discoverability and distribution.
Apple seems to be incredibly poor at discovery, so that's not a point in their favour.
Distribution could be done by any number of other CDNs, as will likely be done by the new EU based App stores.
What's the bet those won't be charging ~30% transaction fees to cover things? And they won't even have the same scale as Apple. ;)
Whereas Apple's relationship seems more predatory/antagonistic (at best).
Like, one may argue that the 30% isn’t valid (and it’s 15% for the majority of devs) but to say Steam does more is absurd.
I’m curious if people who hold this opinion have actually been involved in the process of releasing apps on either platform.
And to be clear, I know valve does contribute to gaming on Linux but that’s single digit market share, so is definitely a far cry from the 30%.
2. Then what does steam offer for 30% that isn’t just distribution? The majority of steam games do not use Valves tooling for matchmaking or their engine.
3. Can you go without name calling? Or are you that childish that it’s the only way you can feel like you have the upper hand in a conversation?
4. I’m not defending a 30% cut and already mentioned that. I’m saying that saying steam offers more for the 30% is absurd.
It is. Anything MS or Apple ever charged for SDKs and development tools was just peanuts compared to their other income streams.
At the end of the day open consumer platforms benefit much, much more from maximizing the amount of 3rd party software that’s available on them than from anything else.
> Then what does steam offer for 30% that isn’t just distribution?
Discoverability, consumer protection, relatively very good UX etc. of course that is much more valuable to smaller/medium developers than to companies like Epic/EA/etc.
Even the App Store and the 30% cut was a great deal for developers and consumers when it came out initially compared to all the alternatives available at the time.
The issue is that at this point Valve/Steam has to actually provide real value to consumers/developers and innovate. Apple can just do nothing and collect free money (consequently the App Store itself sucks immensely as an app/platform) since they don’t have to compete with anyone anymore. What are you going to do? Buy an Android? : D
:(
> Microsoft also charge for commercial access to their SDKs ...
Is that a new thing, or just for specific products? Asking because I've previously used some of their Azure SDK stuff before and that didn't seem to have a charge for SDK access.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/d/visual-studio-enterprise-s...
Meanwhile Xcode is free and has been since the Project Builder days on Next.
I’m not personally saying one is better value or not. Just that the companies have put different values on different parts of their developer flow for many decades now, and one can’t simply say that the money comes from a single source.
The Azure SDK's aren't charged for access: https://azure.github.io/azure-sdk/
The SDK's for modern MS products generally seem to be freely available. Maybe it's only their legacy offerings that have some charge to it?
If that's actually the distinction, then my guess is that it's simply "no cost access means higher numbers of developers using them" for the new stuff.
Whereas the legacy stuff probably would cause internal bun-fight's to happen if they changed their licensing model. ;)
What makes Windows not modern? The whole point of my comments is that different business eases have different funding.
Azure is a separate business for Microsoft than windows development.
I’m going to guess based on your range of comments that you’re primarily a devops and web developer and not a native app or game developer?
Which leads back to my first response to you: I don’t think you’re actually familiar with developing things for distribution on either steam or an App Store.
Different companies fund things differently and put up different barriers.
Again, for the umpteenth time, I am not making a VALUE judgement. I am just saying they all do things differently and without knowledge of their books, nobody here can say what funds what internally
That’s it.
Also you didn’t actually necessarily need it to publish software on Windows.
While if you want to develop for iOS (and even macOS these days) you still need to pay the $100/300 yearly fee (which is there entirely for gatekeeping and not an actual income stream).
You don’t know if Microsoft chose to fund certain parts of their development with the profits from VS enterprise or not. None of us do.
Even, for arguments sake, if we say that they could make it all free and still afford it, it would still affect priorities of what gets developed.
Again, I’m not saying one is right or wrong. I’m just arguing that it’s a lot more nuanced than any of the comments here suggest. Nobody has enough facts outside the companies bookkeeping and leadership to make these hardline claims.
I’m highly certain about that. Regardless also I don’t think most companies work like that. More or less all revenue at least from the in specific divisions like Windows or Azure is going to the same pot.
> Nobody has enough facts outside the companies
Well.. same argument applies to > 90% of all stuff people say on online forums like HN and makes most online discussions entirely meaningless.
Regardless we can still reason about a lot of things with a fairly high degree of confidence without complete certainty.
> we say that they could make it all free and still afford it, it would still affect priorities of what gets developed.
Yet it’s the direction MS has been taking over the last 10-15+ years. They have invested massive amounts of money into products which are either effectively free for most users or don’t really generate enough direct revenue to fund them like GitHub.
Sure. But this has absolutely nothing to do with fairness.
They charge 30% because they can and because developers have no other options.
Anyway consumers paying for HW/OS are the ones that are funding the development of those tools/apis etc. Apple, MS, etc. provided all of that stuff for free (or a nominal fee) for decades because they always needed software developers more than the other way around. Any platform without third party apps would be mostly worthless.
Apple is in an interesting spot because when they released the app store initially 30% was a very good deal compared to how much it cost to publish apps on other phones.
I’ll also reiterate that the majority of devs pay 15% now on the App Store. Not 30%.
And then this gets into every other market choice as well if we’re saying all the stuff is paid for up front by the consumer.
What does Steam offer for its 30%? The majority of games on steam don’t use any steam services unlike apps on the AppStore. Valve doesn’t do educational sessions for developers or provide support for system issues. So is Steam not a terrible deal at double the cost?
But then we get to consoles, where the consumer not only pays for the device but also pays a subscription for online play. If we say that Sony/Microsoft are funded up front by the consumer and then recurring for online fees, then what the value to developers for the 30% (in addition to devkit costs)?
I’m not defending apples cut here. That’s a subjective argument that goes nowhere, but I am saying: if we say Apple’s cut is unfair, why are we okay with the others that are arguably more? And why do people defend the other marketplaces ?
Probably not relative to total revenue. But it doesn’t really change much. To be fair I don’t have a problem at all with 15% or even 30% but with the fact that Apple is running a lite extortion racket by not allowing any competition.
> how a company pays for its RnD internally, one cannot conclusively say that the consumers are the ones who pay for the HW/OS
I don’t think the exact nuances of internal accounting (even if they do it this way instead of just putting all revenue into a single “pot”) really changes anything.
It’s pretty clear (based on all evidence from the last 30+ years) that platforms can generate significantly higher revenue by maximizing the amount of third party software and by giving away development tools/etc. for free or significantly below cost than by trying to extract as much money as feasible possible from 3rd part developers (and it wasn’t a huge concern anyway since all major desktop platforms have always been mostly open)
> why are we okay with the others that are arguably more? And why do people defend the other marketplaces ?
IMHO mainly because Apple has a very large market share and is effectively a monopoly in certain ways.
If you want to develop a mobile app/game you can’t not make it available on iOS. It’s just not an option. This gives Apple a huge amount of pricing power and effectively allows them to exploit developers and consumers by generating a surplus they don’t have to work for.
It a scale of course but no other company is quite in the same position. Steam can lose most of their customers if they stop providing value. Even Google is in a much weaker position (consequently they don’t have such strict controls on iAPs) since phone makers can (and have) make their own app stores, side loading etc. I think consoles are closers but they are purely an entertainment product with a lot of alternatives and substitutes.
Overall I personally believe consumer surplus should most dwarf everything else to an extent. Therefore I don’t see any reason why can’t we apply “arbitrary” rules/standards to corporations based on their size and influence on the market.
They only do it because they are painfully aware their rent-seeking behavior is entirely at whims of ms/apple and they want to have some moat.
https://www.neowin.net/news/valve-co-founder-windows-8-is-a-...
Take a wild guess when they started pushing steam on linux, and which version of windows introduced a store.
I think a lot of folk have a hard time reconciling that there may have been non-altruistic intentions behind something that is enjoyed today.
Similarly, Steam itself was a hedge against physical distribution to cut out the middleman. It wasn’t originally envisioned as a store for anyone but Valve.
But here we are today, and both have positive side effects that actually have outlived the original design.
I'm not sure why we are focusing on the 30%, the problem is that facebook, a very rich company, get charged 0.
> the problem is that facebook, a very rich company, get charged 0.
Just like every other company using the same business model (i.e. ads instead of IAP)?
Are you meaning iOS there?
Of so, please remember they pulled significant amounts of code from Open Source Software in order to lighten their development load. :)
Again, I’m not saying they’re above criticism but I am saying this feels like a very one sided presentation of facts.
Not sure what you're asking?
"Significantly" doesn't seem to be correct. At least, not for the (GPL licensed?) stuff that's been stuck on ancient versions for many years.
Though they have (from my rough memory) made some contributions back to FreeBSD where it seemed to make sense.
All that aside, the point is that they didn't build their platform "almost from scratch".
They assembled a lot of pre-existing pieces (many OSS), then built on top of that. It's a common way of doing things.
And sure, some might be freeloading. But they also do contribute quite a bit to open source. https://opensource.apple.com/
I know your response was more to correct the “developed from scratch” but I still think it’s important to note that it’s not unidirectional. Even in the development of their own platforms, you can find old Usenet discussions of how they were feeding things back. I think they could have gone their own route but Unix compatibility was important.
The history of Next, Apple, and the open source community is very intertwined and unfortunately cannot be reduced so easily.
A somewhat unexpected factoid about Apple and OSS, is that Apple doesn't seem to provide hardware to any OSS projects they didn't themselves create.
Not even Homebrew, who (to my thinking) should have been first in line due to the immense benefit they used to provide Apple's users.
> didn't build their platform "almost from scratch".
Well, no, it’s of course relative I meant that compared to Valve/Steam they did. And it’s not like iOS/macOS is just a collection of open source components slapped together with some small proprietary layer on top. At this point it’s mostly proprietary stuff they had to build effectively from scratch over the years with some open source components here and there.
And in that case, no, Valve didn’t provide all of that. They provided some of it, but AMD did the graphics driver, arch did the OS. Valve still offer less for the 30%. I’m not trying to diminish the effort they put in, but just pointing out the totality of what each store offers behind it is very different.
To your last point, that’s not really relevant to my point. I’m just pushing back on the other person about whether Apple or valve offer more for the 30%. You’re interjecting a completely different argument.
Small/medium developers of course benefit much more from the increased reach/discoverability and PC games have a very different business model than mobile ones of course.
But even for iAP, yes 30% is very step but as a consumer I’m significantly more likely to spend money on an app published by a non-major company if I can use Apple as an intermediary (refunds, subscription management, no cc hassle etc.) I don’t think I’m unique in that way so there is some values we’ll just never know what % it’s actually worth until Apple stop restricting third part stores.
Large companies with a “sticky” user-base of course gain absolutely nothing from it.
Not that I’m trying to defend Apple, on the whole they hardly offer anything useful in return for the 30% to the developers at least because they don’t need to. The App Store as an app/platform is a complete pile of worthless garbage compared to Steam..
Such an odd take.
I begrudgingly use a Macbook for work - that is the laptop my employer issued for me. I pay for IntelliJ, because I think it is an excellent IDE.
Following your logic, Apple should somehow bite 30% of that yearly subscription, when in truth, I am a customer of JetBrains, not of Apple.
Your logic would be fine if, and only if, there was the option to buy the game outside of the AppStore, and you still chose to buy it through the AppStore. That proves you prefer going through Apple's channel and are their customer after all.
In the Steam case, especially for small/medium developers, there are multiple options to buy their games - I generally prefer GoG.
No, that’s not even remotely close to what I said or implied.
> In the Steam case, especially for small/medium developers, there are multiple options to buy their games - I generally prefer GoG.
Yes. The overwhelming majority still use Steam due to various rational reasons.
> Your logic would be fine if, and only if, there was the option to buy the game outside of the AppStore,
I never said that I think that Apple should have a monopoly on app distribution on their platform.
If that's what you're meaning, then I simply don't know as I've not heard that before. :)
The commissions are capped by law in some parts, but not others.
As a small sample, in RO i think a large store chain pays like 0.5%. The consequence is credit card reward programs are either non existent or something like 0.1% cashback. The other consequence is you can pay by card almost anywhere.
On the other hand I've been to NL and small stores simply did not take Visa/MC because it was too expensive for them. Guessing the visa/mc charges weren't capped there.
In DE or NL, you operate via an intermediary ( like payone, etc ) and a single terminal. Maybe here comes the difference.
PS. Larger shops/markets ( like kaufland, carrefour, etc ) have also just one, but I guess they negociate the fee.
No, I was born and live there.
My groceries kiosk has just the single terminal.
Where I shop, only Dedeman, Altex and the eMag showroom still ask me what bank is the card from, and they're nowhere near small...
Edit: Hmm. Cozy? Small world...
But yes, is a mix/jungle of options. But I find fascinating that paying with cards has a far more adoption than some places in western world.
I think that law also cames with caps on card charges. Or at least there was so much competition between banks for the new market that purchase charges dropped on their own.
Culturally, though, small retailers may still believe that credit card fees are higher than they actually are.
They may be concerned about refund and chargeback processes.
Or, their gateway either cannot offer credit cards on their POS terminals for technical or compliance reasons, or the retailer simply hasn’t enabled the payment methods.
It’s not regulation in NL that blocks small retailers from taking V or MC.
Microsoft and Sony take similar cuts for access to their game consoles. In return they provide: - High quality, robust developer APIs. - High quality debuggers, graphics debuggers and CPU+GPU profiling tools with in-depth access to hardware counters - Networking libraries for matchmaking, and a network backend for tunneling network traffic via their online services - True development kit hardware with expanded resources for debugging tools - High quality documentation and direct support - GPU drivers that actually work - Payment processing - All for a hardware platform that is typically sold at or below BOM cost for the initial launch of the device
Google provides distribution via the Play Store, and only for about ~4GB of app before they force you to use your own CDN because they have a limit on the size of the app bundle they'll distribute. There's likely things I'm not aware of that Google provides for app developers rather than game developers, but if we're comparing to game consoles then I'm going to compare tool for tool.
Apple's tooling is better, largely because they have way more control over the target hardware and software environment, but they take an additional cost via their highly restrictive app guidelines.
Much of this comes second hand as I wasn't on this particular team when they were working on Stadia bring-up for proprietary AAA engine (I joined about 2 weeks before Stadia was officially canned).
But the quality of support from Stadia for developers was leagues above what you get from Android. Every few weeks I'll hear from other team members how good it was working with Google for Stadia. The tooling was great. We got developer kit hardware. We had documentation and direct support channels and Google was actively managing outreach and development on tooling to ease transitioning into their systems (Google was one of the biggest driving forces behind DXC's SPIR-V target).
Compare this against the same people commenting on the Android experience and it's the complete opposite. We're left out to dry with poor support while trying to target devices that barely work.
What's the difference? Google actually had to fight to get us to come to their store. They had competition and weren't acting as a toll collector to a captive market. Game developers had the choice to tell Google to kick rocks, Xbox and PlayStation aren't going anywhere. Google had no choice but to play ball with good support and fair pricing. No such pressure exists on Mobile, and they crank the toll as a result.
However with mobile storefronts at the start everybody gets treated equally since they all have access to the same limited number of features and get the same level of (some would say neglectful) automated support. For the most part Epic Games goes through the same process of uploading a game or program and waiting for approval that Jimbob does. It's only afterwards that the level of access changes. It's this way by design. Not only because early on there were no big names in the mobile space and so no real tier system was necessary, but also because quantity is valued over quality. There are about a thousand uploads to Google Play a week (I haven't found strict data on how many are only games, but the process is the same for games and apps so it doesn't really matter), versus between twenty to thirty on PlayStation and Xbox. Creating unique avenues and methods would bottleneck things horrifically for mobile. As a developer you get an informal discount for the relative lack of quality control and increased competition you'll be facing.
This cost is very evident in the prices of the games. You won't ever see games that aren't asset flips or shovelware below a non-sale price of $1.99 on Xbox Games Store, but you'll see plenty of $0.79 games on Google Play and Steam.
[1]: https://x.com/tomwarren/status/1671981463040819200?s=46
[2]: https://x.com/twthereddragon/status/1672270407179665409?s=46
Also, from memory, Xbox/Sony consoles are loss leaders to recoup profits from store sales. I'm not sure if that holds for Google and Apple phones, but I'd be more okay with app store fees if it did.
Sure. It's all just revenue growth. Sans some anti-competition regulation, it's the prerogative of a business to charge as much as the market will bear, as much as it can be sustained, by whatever legal means necessary.
What I meant by "wild" is that in this case, the dev of the game is the one receiving that ~30% slice. Apple+Google get about the same as the dev does.
After all they play a massive part in making those purchases possible.
They don't attract people, they gatekeep solutions/entertainment. It is the exact other way around, the products on their store attract people into their environment.
That's why MS bought game studios to get more games and therefore users to the Xbox.
It's very different on the mobile side: Apple sells iOS devices at full cost. With Android, it gets even more mucky as Samsung, the hardware vendor, gets 0% of the sales on their handset (unless the user, for some reason, uses the Samsung store), and Google gets the full 30% for only their software work. So the fact that Google gets 30% is wild.
Not that I trust Google (my personal phones are Apple) but how do you think a phone with all software made by Samsung will work? Every time I lay my hands on one of their phones (and I have one on my desk for Android development) something annoys me. They somehow think they know how to do UI/UX but they still haven't learned after all these years of "customizing" Android.
So yes, Google deserves some money. Not 30% but some.
And your Samsung comment doesn’t make sense. Samsung gets the operating system for free and then sells hardware for whatever profit they can get for it. Plus all of the post-sale platform services profit they can manage, just like Google and Apple. What is wild?
The intention is to point out that simple arguments of 'Xbox is charging 30%, so it is fine that the mobile platforms do the same thing' failed to take into account of the nuances of the situation. Isn't it weird that these platforms are all charging 30% even through all these platforms have different business models, with different cost structure and provide different values? I hadn't even talked about how Microsoft has been getting no money off sales on Steam when it is their platform, because they hadn't (yet?) lock down the platform.
Finally, Nintendo did sell the Wii U at a loss. [0]
[0]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-still-selling-wii-u-a...