7 ms·

The point is Apple have a monopoly. Your supply/demand point is facile. For small indie developers 30% is an outrageous cut. That is what the complaint is about

The point is Apple have a monopoly. Your supply/demand point is facile. For small indie developers 30% is an outrageous cut. That is what the complaint is about.

ceejayoz 8y ago
Apple has a "monopoly" over the app store as much as Disney has a monopoly on Disney movies.
- gsich 8y ago
  Not an accurate comparison.
- bolzano 8y ago
  I don't think this is a fair comparison. If I had the skills (which I certainly don't), I could make a cool Disney style movie and make it available for anyone, and even charge them whatever I liked. I explicitly cannot do this for iOS apps. There is just no way for me to get my app in front of people's eyes without paying the Apple tax. If I was prevented from distributing my movie somehow by Disney, you might have a point.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    > I could make a cool Disney style movie and make it available for anyone, and even charge them whatever I liked. Disney's not going to put it in their online store, though. In the case of an iOS app, you can sell the source and let people build it on their own Xcode installs, if you like.
- astrodust 8y ago
  It's more like if Disney owned the DVD standard and could dictate who could and couldn't put content on it. Then we'd all have a half dozen completely incompatible physical media players and so on.
eropple 8y ago
For Steam specifically, I can state with confidence that that's not true. On a phone at the moment so linking is difficult, but Jeff Vogel (the definitional "indie developer", there are very few people who have been doing it as long or as consistently) has a GDC talk on YouTube where he goes through his numbers--and he's a guy who went to Steam very late overall. Steam's bigger marketplace and that it removes the uncertainty and risks around payment provider management (chargebacks etc.) easily make up for the bigger cut. Do less work, make more money. It's not unreasonable.
- bolzano 8y ago
  Thanks for that. Big fan of Jeff Vogel. Hadn't seen that talk so a link would be great. I'm not saying Apple don't provide a service, of course they do, though at times it sucks. My main point is about is about the price, not the principle. I pay Apple a yearly subscription just to develop for their platform. On top of that every sale I make they get 30%. Would 95% be ok? Another extreme element of this is that I cannot sell a licence outside of the App Store to my customers. I cannot ask them to buy from my website (which many have asked about and would be happy to do) and provide them with a code they can use to unlock or upgrade. This is explicitly banned. Unless you're a big player like Spotify or Netflix your app will not be allowed to do this. I've tried and been denied and stonewalled. In this case I am willing to build and manage my own payment/licencing setup to gain 30%. I'm just not allowed to do that.
  - eropple 8y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs And I don't, tbh, have an opinion about the rest of your post; I'm talking about Steam, not Apple. But, having gone down this road myself (and why I cite the Jeff Vogel talk): you would almost certainly spend more than 30% on customer support and payment processing and fraud protection and accounting. Or you would do it incorrectly, which is worse. And, regardless, you'd expose yourself to a way smaller audience. It seems to me to be a good way to shoot yourself in the foot for no gain (and as an app developer myself I certainly wouldn't bother).
koonsolo 8y ago
> For small indie developers 30% is an outrageous cut. No indie game developer that has been around for a while would say this. A 30% cut is way less than anything else that came before it. Steam also allows you to sell Steam keys from wherever, and you get to keep 100% of that. This is how Humble Bundle works. When you release on Steam, you also get free exposure at first, which is basically free ads. You would otherwise pay several thousands of dollars for that. So in any sense, Steam worked to get that 30%, and there is no serious indie game developer that is arguing with that.
- bolzano 8y ago
  I'm not a game developer and I don't know the Steam setup very well. I would genuinely love to hear from some 'serious indie game developers' though. Do they really think 30% is fair? Or maybe are they, like me, just accepting it and have no other real alternative (Hobson's Choice)... Which is not exactly happily handing over 30% of your earnings to Steam/Apple. Also, as mentioned in other replies, Apple explicitly blocks any other licencing path unless you're one of the big boys and can afford lawyers etc...
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  To be honest, these days it's harder to justify those 30%, as what you get from Steam marketing-wise today is just a poor shadow of what you were getting five years ago.

The point is Apple have a monopoly. Your supply/demand point is facile. For small indie developers 30% is an outrageous cut. That is what the complaint is about.

ceejayoz 8y ago

Apple has a "monopoly" over the app store as much as Disney has a monopoly on Disney movies.

gsich 8y ago
Not an accurate comparison.
bolzano 8y ago
I don't think this is a fair comparison. If I had the skills (which I certainly don't), I could make a cool Disney style movie and make it available for anyone, and even charge them whatever I liked. I explicitly cannot do this for iOS apps. There is just no way for me to get my app in front of people's eyes without paying the Apple tax. If I was prevented from distributing my movie somehow by Disney, you might have a point.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  > I could make a cool Disney style movie and make it available for anyone, and even charge them whatever I liked. Disney's not going to put it in their online store, though. In the case of an iOS app, you can sell the source and let people build it on their own Xcode installs, if you like.
astrodust 8y ago
It's more like if Disney owned the DVD standard and could dictate who could and couldn't put content on it. Then we'd all have a half dozen completely incompatible physical media players and so on.

eropple 8y ago

For Steam specifically, I can state with confidence that that's not true. On a phone at the moment so linking is difficult, but Jeff Vogel (the definitional "indie developer", there are very few people who have been doing it as long or as consistently) has a GDC talk on YouTube where he goes through his numbers--and he's a guy who went to Steam very late overall. Steam's bigger marketplace and that it removes the uncertainty and risks around payment provider management (chargebacks etc.) easily make up for the bigger cut. Do less work, make more money. It's not unreasonable.

bolzano 8y ago
Thanks for that. Big fan of Jeff Vogel. Hadn't seen that talk so a link would be great. I'm not saying Apple don't provide a service, of course they do, though at times it sucks. My main point is about is about the price, not the principle. I pay Apple a yearly subscription just to develop for their platform. On top of that every sale I make they get 30%. Would 95% be ok? Another extreme element of this is that I cannot sell a licence outside of the App Store to my customers. I cannot ask them to buy from my website (which many have asked about and would be happy to do) and provide them with a code they can use to unlock or upgrade. This is explicitly banned. Unless you're a big player like Spotify or Netflix your app will not be allowed to do this. I've tried and been denied and stonewalled. In this case I am willing to build and manage my own payment/licencing setup to gain 30%. I'm just not allowed to do that.
- eropple 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxVBJem3Rs And I don't, tbh, have an opinion about the rest of your post; I'm talking about Steam, not Apple. But, having gone down this road myself (and why I cite the Jeff Vogel talk): you would almost certainly spend more than 30% on customer support and payment processing and fraud protection and accounting. Or you would do it incorrectly, which is worse. And, regardless, you'd expose yourself to a way smaller audience. It seems to me to be a good way to shoot yourself in the foot for no gain (and as an app developer myself I certainly wouldn't bother).

koonsolo 8y ago

> For small indie developers 30% is an outrageous cut. No indie game developer that has been around for a while would say this. A 30% cut is way less than anything else that came before it. Steam also allows you to sell Steam keys from wherever, and you get to keep 100% of that. This is how Humble Bundle works. When you release on Steam, you also get free exposure at first, which is basically free ads. You would otherwise pay several thousands of dollars for that. So in any sense, Steam worked to get that 30%, and there is no serious indie game developer that is arguing with that.

bolzano 8y ago
I'm not a game developer and I don't know the Steam setup very well. I would genuinely love to hear from some 'serious indie game developers' though. Do they really think 30% is fair? Or maybe are they, like me, just accepting it and have no other real alternative (Hobson's Choice)... Which is not exactly happily handing over 30% of your earnings to Steam/Apple. Also, as mentioned in other replies, Apple explicitly blocks any other licencing path unless you're one of the big boys and can afford lawyers etc...
seba_dos1 8y ago
To be honest, these days it's harder to justify those 30%, as what you get from Steam marketing-wise today is just a poor shadow of what you were getting five years ago.