I wonder how much of this is deliberate collusion, as opposed to an equilibrium where companies all realize that it's more profitable to match each others' fees than to try to compete on price.
If other app stores charge 30%, you know that developers are willing to pay 30%, and there's not much to be gained by reducing your own rate below that.
I wonder how much of this is deliberate collusion, as opposed to an equilibrium
I saw a theory in the comments on HN once that companies can 'collude' without communicating with each other. If memory serves, it was different than just achieving an equilibrium.
Maybe it's enough of a theory to have a name? Hopefully someone who knows what I'm thinking of can chime in.
Edit: I may be thinking of "tacit collusion". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion - "Tacit collusion is a collusion between competitors, which do not explicitly exchange information and achieving an agreement about coordination of conduct."
They read each-other's press releases, they reasearch competitors, employees and mamagers move between companies. There is no way for them to not communicate.
Just because bosses didnt sit down a and sign a deal in a smokey room doesnt mean no decision was made
Yes, although typically tacit collusion is introduced with the example of price matching at big box retailers. The setup in this case is somewhat different, although the outcome is still an equilibrium in which all sellers "agree" to keep prices high (and above marginal cost) without directly communicating.
Steam has a much better case to argue, given that they're a fiscally independent company with no board of directors or shareholders to satisfy. Since they don't get monthly cash infusions, they need to do two things: shoot for an aggressive growth model, and shower the end user in features. In my opinion, they've succeeded in both regards: their 30% cut is pretty large, but it's justified given the scale of the operation they run. Plus, their generosity with things like cloud save, video streaming, and their assortment of community offerings, it's hard to really claim that Steam doesn't deserve their cut. If anything, I consider them the premier example of what a "premium" CDN pipeline looks like.
Or is it more that "Apple stuff" is not directly substitutable with "Google stuff", and that Apple has a monopoly on "Apple stuff"?