Popular Japanese smartphone games have introduced external payment systems
english.kyodonews.net
english.kyodonews.net
More seriously: There have always been mobile games that have a purchase price or ask for a single payment. You could find one right now. The vast majority of popular apps have in game transactions. Game developers just want to get paid for the work they do.
... actually, I just checked, and if you scroll down enough in the Games tab on your iPhone's App Store app, they seem to be running it now under "Pay Once & Play". Might be worth a look.
At one point in-app purchases were listed clearly and prominently so they were easy to inspect (and hopefully embarrassing for nonsense like $99 wheelbarrows of smurfberries[1].) Now it seems like IAP rates are hidden below the fold, unfortunately.
[1] https://www.pipelinecomics.com/smurfberries-apple-app-store-...
So now there's an alternative way to pay. Let's be happy about that.
The irony is that Japanese game platforms have been using the walled-garden licensing and platform fee business model for more than 40 years[1], and it continues today in the Nintendo eShop and PSN store. I doubt Nintendo and Sony are going to reduce their platform fees just because developers don't like them.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_(Nintendo)
[2] https://www.1d3.com/blog/platform-fees
Interestingly enough the Wikipedia article claims that Nintendo introduced DRM and licensing to combat shovelware. But shovelware on Nintendo platforms has continued to be a problem from the Wii to the current Switch eShop.
Exactly this policy and their interference to app developers created a selection pressure and a cutout hole in shape of "only slightly gamelike && technically not pornographic && in high demand", and the category of apps more accurately represented as "strip clubs with casinos with no cash-out" filled the vacuum like a Ghibli film blob monster.
Early iOS games were more game-like. Apps like SNES remakes, flappy birds and music games, were more common, but they all converged down and down into porn territory.
It doesn't happen naturally; not even pornographic game markets, let alone Steam or Itch, aren't as badly infested with gambling as App Store. It only happened artificially by how Apple ran it over the past ~15 years.
Game devs discovered pretty quickly that, Apple having set the initial expectation that an iOS game should cost $0.99, the only viable way to run a business on a mobile platform was a f2p/exploitation/casino model.
Last year, 58% of PC gaming revenue was from microtransactions, and that percentage is only growing.
(Setting aside the issue of defining who are the goodies and who are the baddies in a way that does not enable the baddies to purely technically comply with the goodie guidelines while remaining baddies.)
Do you give a shit about honest indie devs? Putting them in quotes says you probably don’t.
If you did, perhaps you’d find that this is an obvious path to a better state of affairs that to walled garden operators is zero cost (or even profitable), financially and reputationally, while making it more economically viable to make good games that don’t use dark patterns to keep your kid glued to the screen and regularly asking for money to exchange for some in-game coins and lootboxes.
> zero cost (or even profitable)
Having to handle _more_ developers isn't zero cost, but let's assume they actually sell games and indeed, make profit. That would be great! I would love a mobile ecosystem where there is a variety of things, where my phone is an actual viable platform for more than just browsing online and shitposting on HN.
>financially
You fundamentally misunderstand just how much money gachas generate every year. You could release a dozen Hollow Knights, a dozen Balatros, a dozen Stardew Valleys every year, and you'd still make less money than taking 30% off of a _single_ gacha. Genshin Impact grossed $10 billion last year. WuWa, ZZZ, HSR all gross close to half a billion each, each year. Pokemon TCG is on track for 1.5bil. And that's just gachas: games like Call of Duty Mobile and other just print out money.
There are no universes, neither in Apple or Google's imagination (which is very locked in on how much money they're making right now, as opposed to how much they could) or in anyone reasonable's thoughts where indie games take off so much they overtake any amount of profit they're currently making. There's no catching up to the amount of content a team like Genshin's puts out every three months.
> reputationally
If you think Apple gives a single shit about reputation when they're the only dealer in town, I have news for you. If you think Google gives a single shit about reputation when 90% of traffic goes through their store anyways, I have news for you.
Where exactly have I written “honest indies”?
> You fundamentally misunderstand
Sorry no, you fundamentally misunderstand the point. Try to do the math. Those microtransactions generate loads of revenue; taxing them higher will generate more revenue for the walled garden. The revenue that can then be used to subsidise a drastic reduction of the tax for the rest.
> If you think Apple gives a single shit about reputation when they're the only dealer in town
You are casually sneaking in falsehoods, so I’m not sure reading the rest was even worhtwhile. Not only is Apple not the only dealer in town, it is not even the largest one.
Designing entire hardware, software, and backend platforms and investing billions of dollars into them every year is not nothing. If what these companies built took no work, try making your own platform to release games on and see how little work it truly needs.
Designing the hardware does not entitle you to extracting more money from anything. If you don't want to lose money on your hardware, don't sell it at a loss. (Which Apple isn't doing, nor are any of the Android device manufacturers.) I haven't seen Dyson try to extract 30% off of every hairdressing salon that uses their dryers.
> software, and backend platforms
Are made to attract users on the platform. With the intention of making money from it after. Cool. Quick question, do you pay for Chrome, or Firefox ? They invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year into it, how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ?
> investing billions of dollars into them every year is not nothing
The billions have been invested initially. The ongoing costs of running the App Store / Play Store are not even close to a billion, especially not for Google that already owns all the network infrastructure necessary to run it.
>If what these companies built took no work, try making your own platform to release games on and see how little work it truly needs.
Sure, that's very simple: take any open publishing store on Android, and ask yourself why noone uses them for games delivery. I'll even add a hint: it's not because they don't offer diff based assets upgrades.
> With the intention of making money from it after.
What else do you expect—the goodness of their heart alone? That would be the shortest lived business ever.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to base a business off creating positive value for people; but it’ll create vanishingly little value unless you also make sure this business is profitable—that allows to create more positive value for people over time and incentivises the ongoing improvement.
> Quick question, do you pay for Chrome, or Firefox ? They invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year into it, how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ?
No, but I hope both of us know how both of them are financed—by Google’s ad revenue, primarily. I would prefer the software I use in general, and operating system in particular, to not be financed primarily through ad revenue.
But they can work together with 3p to expand the capabilities of the device and incentivize it with revenue sharing agreements.
>how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ?
It's somewhat strange but payments have been taken up by other vendors like stripe. If payments were built into the browser it would make commerce easier and would allow them to take a percentage.
>and ask yourself why noone uses them for games delivery
Because being able to distribute to a store billions of people already visit is valuable.
70% of Japan smartphone games bypass in-app payments to avoid IT giants
I think it should be:
70% of Japan smartphone games bypass in-app payments to avoid unnecessarily additional costs to customers
Or more inflammatorily:
70% of Japan smartphone games bypass in-app payments to avoid unnecessarily parasitic middlemen
More seriously, Android does allow sideloading and alternative game stores. There are also subscription services like Xbox game pass, Amazon Luna, and Apple Arcade, though I don't know their exact payment models. And PC gaming still exists - there are popular game stores like Steam that take a smaller cut.
I think it's hard to make money on games on any platform, but Steam does seem to have a vibrant indie game scene.
They each come bundled with the OS on your device and have massive advantages over any competing stores (if they even allowed them to exist).
Since devices are so expensive and users tend to be loyal, [company] isn't going to see much increase in sales by lowering their fees. With no competition and no downward pressure on prices, they just pick the 'industry standard', effectively price fixing without true collusion.
I'm pretty sure this isn't ideal but I don't pretend to know the answers. Until then, I'll just be focusing on building my ideas as web apps. (Flutter apps, so I can release elsewhere if the terms are reasonable).
Two companies can't own all of computing.
Smartphones are the internet for most people, and two companies have installed comprehensive paywalls and distribution gateways.
It's unnatural how large and complete their monopolies are.
Call your legislator and demand web installs without scare walls and hidden developer flags. With no phony restrictions on app type, technology choice, JIT/runtimes, or UI adherence.
We need complete freedom on mobile.
I don't remember being forced to use a randomizer for downloading executables...
Actually, people are more likely to install random apps from an app store, because the OS promotes that behavior.
And this is still how people get desktop software.
Technically alternative stores exist on Android.
On IOS you can argue customers are paying for security.
Stopping Billy from downloading a key logger is a corporate choice Apple makes.
If you need to install random binaries from the internet your free to buy android device or a cheap computer.
iOS reduces the attack surface.
You have to navigate five settings menus deep to enable the ability to even install them, and after that the OS scares you into thinking it'll turn your phone into a grenade.
Unless you're 0.0000001% of users, you will never do this.
Google knows what they're doing. It's the tyranny of defaults.
Most people are stupid.
In the modern era getting access to your personal phone let's an attacker have access to your identity, finances, etc.
A better approach would be real sandboxing, but let's not get our hopes up.
Consumers largely don't care and are not interested in esoteric concepts like free software. I would be careful about dictating how things should work.
Do you know how difficult it is to exercise your freedom to install software on an Android?
Both of these companies know what they're doing. They've co-opted computing and have locked it down and owned it.
Download the APK, open it, and tap past the warnings?
https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-install-apks-31494/
Isn't that about the same difficulty as installing an app from a .zip on Windows or a .dmg on macOS?
Game developers like Epic would certainly like to pay less money to Apple and Google than they pay to Nintendo and Sony (and Microsoft for the Xbox game store), but what's the legal argument for terminating Apple and Google's walled-garden game store businesses? And doesn't Android already allow sideloading?
> Smartphones are the internet for most people, and two companies have installed comprehensive paywalls and distribution gateways.
The web is the internet for most people, and neither Apple nor Google have installed paywalls and distribution gateways for third-party web pages. (Apple does restrict browser engines, but ironically that might be the only thing preventing a chromium monoculture.)
Phones are used for everything in life. Finding jobs, finding romance, ordering food, paying for things, navigating. You can't even pull up a menu at a modern restaurant without a phone.
Phones are the entirety of computing for over 50% of Americans. Are we going to let two companies own the entirety of that and tax it?
Imagine if our cars were like phones. When you take your Honda out for a spin, if it couldn't visit certain destinations. Or if your car taxed McDonalds (which passes the cost onto you) every time you stop by. Imagine if it shoved its view of what it wants you to see in front of you, forcing you to take detours or miss your objective entirely. That's what our lax regulatory environment has allowed to happen to computing.
What web sites are you seeing that are blocked on Android (or is is just an issue in Chrome?)
Have you tried turning off "Safe Browsing"?
It's arguably a legitimate safety feature, but I believe you can turn it off and visit any web site.
I think sites presenting forged or expired SSL certificates are blocked (probably a legitimate security feature), but it may be possible to add them manually if desired.
> By installing Onavo, millions unknowingly granted Facebook full access to their digital activity. App usage, browsing habits, and precise timestamps were silently collected. Facebook VPN didn’t just observe its own users - it tracked behavior across rival platforms like YouTube, Amazon, and Snapchat.
> ... Engineers exploited Onavo’s infrastructure to install a root certificate on phones, masking Snapchat’s servers to decrypt user activity.
This is an obvious security hole that should never have existed, but the fact that Facebook eagerly exploited it, while abusing VPNs for tracking and enterprise certs for sidestepping app store privacy rules, shows the threat landscape.
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/news/when-facebook-used-vpn...
Obviously I don’t know economics and costs behind it, but from very uninformed point of view it feels that even 10% would still give quite a profit to stores, even after processor fees.
I mean, if we ever want society to improve at all
The fact is that any decent society has restrictions on absolute freedom for good reasons
I also remember an experiment found that something like 8% of people swerve over to purposely hit turtles on the shoulder of the road. I would be much more interested in identifying and containing those people.
All I'm saying is that if there aren't enough berries to go around, maybe we should be taking a long look at the people hoarding enough berries to feed thousands of other people
E-feudalism isn't capitalism.
The gatekeepers are governments without democratic representation. Wondering what fair exploitation looks like is choosing a warped perspective.
But it isn't what is happening if they are staying on the platform's marketplaces and also bypassing payments. There is no "market" effect there.
Not saying I agree with the 30%, but third party app stores exist. That is the market avenue (and no one uses them).
If you say "fine, I'll go on another app store" then that is a free market in action - but good luck getting anyone to download your game.
One of their last Symbian phones, the N8 (and if you ask me, one of the most beautiful ever designed), sold very well, some 4 million units! But the ground was shifting so much, that even that couldn’t save them.
In other words, 30% would give quite a profit to stores, plus 20%. That's why giants are fighting tooth and nail to keep it.
~70% (of the top 16 Japanese Game titles, or, 11 of them)
Fuck google and fuck apple, but this isn't exactly a large sample
No way do I want to trust randoms with my payment info.
Hell I just purchased a Claude.ai Pro Subscription and there's no way to remove my card info afterwards. No way to contact support (the useless chatbot send button is grayed out).
If I recall correctly the major proponents of the push for external payment systems on the App Store were companies like Match.com who own Tinder etc. and indulge in various scummy user-hostile practices (like charging certain demographics higher for the same service). Sure, break the "walled garden" and let the wolves in.