
Ask HN: Platform owners should charge a fee to use it? - csneeky
Just curious on general thoughts here since Apple has this thing with Epic going on and, generally in the history of software, other platform owners have charge a fee for releasing software on top of a platform.
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terwey
I don't have any sources at hand but basically every existing platform in the
past used to charge a fee for releasing on their platform. Nintendo certainly
did on their consoles, Windows effectively did by charging for the SDK's. Both
Microsoft and Sony also charge for publishing to their stores for the
respective consoles.

Apple (and Google) both give the SDK away for free and for a low fee you can
publish to the platform and in exchange they handle the payment etc. 30%
sounds like a lot but if you consider the cost of having to deal with a
payment provider and maintaining it etc it's for most companies a no brainer
and peanuts.

