alt Hacker NewsI’m very curious how Tim Sweeney will react to this. This is very much not the victory lap he was hoping to take (nor are the Apple rulings)
1. I think uptake of third party stores is quite low and there’s a strong incentive to stay available on the primary store
2. The App Store model has very much been that the paid apps are subsidizing the free ones. So it’s somewhat fair to charge for using the infrastructure, if you’re not contributing into the pot (and are siphoning away from it)
3. Those per install costs are brutal. I was thinking they’d do a dollar , but at almost $4, they’re outside what most people would spend. This is a strong way to keep F2P games from instituting external payment processing.
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> I’m very curious how Tim Sweeney will react to this.
“Epic has indicated that it opposes the service fees that Google announced it may implement in the future and that Epic will challenge these fees if they come into effect.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/848540/google-app-fees-externa...
>they’re outside what most people would spend
Free mobile games work via whales subsidizing free users. It may be more than the median user, but it's less than the average spend per user.
Even a dollar would be too much.
He'll be mad, because he can't sell more nearly-nude Kim Kardashian skins to 12 year olds and make his extra ten cents per sale.
Poor Tim! Hey anyone know if I'm allowed to put my own skin store inside the Fortnite store? It's only fair.
Developers pay Google to access its services. Infrastructure costs account for less than 1% of the profit margin and are practically negligible. Google acts like a pimp, obsessed with squeezing profit above all else.