> The users are all on Steam, getting their recommendations from Steam, and buying games in Steam sales. Hence all the indie developers publish to Steam.
Which is how Steam charges 30%. Devs yell at Apple because they can say Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam.
With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more.
That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored.
> Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam.
But that's the core the issue. In one case (steam) the developers pay 30% because they estimate the services they are getting from steam are worth it, in apple case the devs. pay because they have to.
The problem is not with the business model or the % cut apple takes, the problem is that the business relies on monopolistic behavior.
The solution would be simple, decouple IOS the platform from the app store the service. If the apple store is really worth a 30% cut the market would re converge to that price.
> With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more.
> That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored.
I would argue that digital distribution and platform are fundamentally different to brick and mortal retailers.
For one, the marginal cost of an app on the store vs space on the shelves is different. My understanding was that what actually drives the cost of shelve space is competition between product manufacturer and the price setting is closer to an auction as opposed to a set price. Nobody would have an issue if all apple was doing was selling promotion/ads spot on the app store.
Also apple shares on digital distribution is much larger than any single retails chain in the US. Thus giving them extreme pricing power.
Which is how Steam charges 30%. Devs yell at Apple because they can say Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam.
With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more.
That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored.