>The 30% store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers' 70% must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games. There's a rationale for this on console where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30% is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service. We're intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating Fortnite as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac.
>If you look at it, the stores on the smartphone platforms actually do very little. They’ll put ads up in front of your game. When you search for Fortnite on iOS you’ll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite. It’s just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available direct to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It’s a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now.
How about the 30% of store tax must cover the cost of developing, operating and supporting their Open Platforms Operating System? Along with payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service?
Google doesn't charge them a cent for using Android. As a matter of fact if you don't like the Google Store, Maps, and Search it has to offer for free, you could have forked the whole thing and tidy up all the loose end and call it something else.
> Why should Epic care about Android's development costs?
He seems to care about console makers' costs and considers their 30% there reasonable, but he does not seem to consider them reasonable here.
> Why overpay for Google's?
I don't think he's under any obligation too, but it's interesting to see platforms like Steam gain traction despite not handling most of the investment in the platform, and that's on Windows where you can get an installer.
> He seems to care about console makers' costs and considers their 30% there reasonable, but he does not seem to consider them reasonable here.
Because the absolute majority of Android devices are not made by Google, just like the absolute majority of Windows devices are not made by Microsoft. What if Microsoft took away 30% of revenue from all software developers publishing on Windows Store?
>Because the absolute majority of Android devices are not made by Google, just like the absolute majority of Windows devices are not made by Microsoft. What if Microsoft took away 30% of revenue from all software developers publishing on Windows Store?
And you have to paid for Windows License? Somewhere along the line someone will have to paid. Open Source isn't free.
Of course it is perfectly fine for EPIC to avoid the 30% charge. But to judge Google charging 30% as unreasonable while you are getting the ecosystem for free, and than compare the cost of console maker is just being hypocrite.
This is speaking as someone who doesn't like Google even before the first iPhone shipped.
The CEO of Epic knows full well that the primary service the Play Store provides is access to the users who have the Play Store installed and use it as their primary means of obtaining apps.
>The 30% store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers' 70% must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games. There's a rationale for this on console where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30% is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service. We're intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating Fortnite as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-fortn...
And another interesting quote from him
>If you look at it, the stores on the smartphone platforms actually do very little. They’ll put ads up in front of your game. When you search for Fortnite on iOS you’ll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite. It’s just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available direct to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It’s a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/03/tim-sweeney-epics-ceo-on-...