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Your claim that steam/sony/microsoft all charge 30% no negotiations is dated if not completely inaccurate. It might have been that way the last time you were in

Your claim that steam/sony/microsoft all charge 30% no negotiations is dated if not completely inaccurate. It might have been that way the last time you were involved in negotiations (if ever) but it's questionable whether that's still true - we know for a fact Valve offers a lower cut to big studios now. There's basically no guarantee that it's not possible to negotiate anymore, and I would be shocked if the Playstation or XBox business wings were unwilling to negotiate a cut down in order to land a big, million-selling title. Is your claim that the iOS store cut is 30% because Steam was 30%? Kind of an odd argument given that the iOS store was heavily focused on "apps" initially, and still sort of is, even if games ended up being a big moneymaker. The 30% is now coming out of a different sort of product than it did at store launch, too. Lots and lots of F2P stuff with in-app purchases, subscriptions, etc. Even if 30% was justified for single-purchase apps, does it make sense to continue giving them an ongoing 30% of all revenue when IAPs and subscriptions are literally not using any Apple infrastructure if they're things like 'unlocking premium features in the app you already have' or 'getting premium support'?

bathtub365 7y ago
> IAPs and subscriptions are literally not using any Apple infrastructure if they're things like 'unlocking premium features in the app you already have' or 'getting premium support’? They’re using Apple’s account, pricing, payment, and licensing infrastructure
sokoloff 7y ago
Apple and Google Play store cut for subscriptions drops to 15% for the period after a year doesn’t it?
scarface74 7y ago
I won’t lose sleep over f2p apps that profit by getting whales to spend money on in app consumables. I hope Apple Arcade cuts even more into those types of apps. As far as subscriptions, the answer is simple - don’t allow subscriptions through the App Store. Netflix, Spotify, Linux Academy, AT&T Now, Sling, etc force you to pay for subscriptions outside of the App Store. You can subscribe to Hulu in the App Store but not Hulu Live. As far as the 30%, all of the rumors are that none of the big players like Netflix (before they stopped allowing in app subscriptions), Hulu, or HBO ever paid more than 15%.
dijit 7y ago
Hi, > Your claim that steam/sony/microsoft all charge 30% no negotiations is dated if not completely inaccurate I get the general impression that you're either in a much better bargaining position than I am, or you're not in the industry. I still make AAA games, the latest of which came out this year[0] I can tell you concretely that we pay 30% of every purchase to the first party. (except on PC, because we sell on uPlay and the Epic store, which has lower fees -- one of steams conditions is that you cant offer the game cheaper elsewhere, so we could never apply discounts on uplay) > we know for a fact Valve offers a lower cut to big studios now Valve has been openly hostile to my publisher for many years, perhaps this is the problem? Frequently unlisting our games.[1] We as a publisher do not officially respond to these things because they have better customer relations and a higher sentiment than we do, we would lose a PR battle, so we accept it and move on. This happens in negotiations too. > I would be shocked if the Playstation or XBox business wings were unwilling to negotiate a cut down in order to land a big, million-selling title They have almost all the power in those negotiations. The only bargaining power we have is if we have a very strongly rated title that we threaten to make exclusive. But in those cases we would lose more from _not_ selling on the platform than we would make back in the first-party cut. So it's lose-lose. 30% applies to in-game consumables too, anything processed by them as a payment provider. What games company do you work for? :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division_2 [1]: https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-1655676773 https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-165567...
- baud147258 7y ago
  Perhaps your games on Steam would be better received if they didn't force the buyer to also install a crapware like Uplay on top of Steam and forcing to create another user account to play a game the buyer has just paid for (perhaps it has changed, I haven't bought an Ubi game in years).
  - dijit 7y ago
    Regarding a second account; I'm afraid there's very little that can be done on that front, there was account linking added some time ago that meant you didn't need to maintain or continually log-in to uplay, you just create a linked account and forget about it- no second password needed I believe. So at least for usability it should not be any different than normal. If you have other specific complaints about uPlay then I'd be happy to hear them and feed them back to the team, since we're actually located in the same studio. Unfortunately uPlay does drive a significant amount of business value, handling things like entitlements so that each game doesn't have to re-implement them and allowing us to handle things like distribution of "other" types of clients, like development versions of the games for review, or debug enabled versions of games for debugging. It also allows for A/B testing of various features. As recently as 2017 there was consensus among ubisoft upper management that the perception of uPlay was bad, so more focus has been put on the user aspects, so in theory it should be much better now than it was, because before it was very business focused. But, as everything, people are happy to help if they can, nobody wants to make an awful system. Unless the problem is that you have to have a second launcher? that's usually peoples primary complaint. (and in those cases uPlay tries to hide itself and stay out of the way)

bathtub365 7y ago

> IAPs and subscriptions are literally not using any Apple infrastructure if they're things like 'unlocking premium features in the app you already have' or 'getting premium support’? They’re using Apple’s account, pricing, payment, and licensing infrastructure

sokoloff 7y ago

Apple and Google Play store cut for subscriptions drops to 15% for the period after a year doesn’t it?

scarface74 7y ago

I won’t lose sleep over f2p apps that profit by getting whales to spend money on in app consumables. I hope Apple Arcade cuts even more into those types of apps. As far as subscriptions, the answer is simple - don’t allow subscriptions through the App Store. Netflix, Spotify, Linux Academy, AT&T Now, Sling, etc force you to pay for subscriptions outside of the App Store. You can subscribe to Hulu in the App Store but not Hulu Live. As far as the 30%, all of the rumors are that none of the big players like Netflix (before they stopped allowing in app subscriptions), Hulu, or HBO ever paid more than 15%.

dijit 7y ago

Hi, > Your claim that steam/sony/microsoft all charge 30% no negotiations is dated if not completely inaccurate I get the general impression that you're either in a much better bargaining position than I am, or you're not in the industry. I still make AAA games, the latest of which came out this year[0] I can tell you concretely that we pay 30% of every purchase to the first party. (except on PC, because we sell on uPlay and the Epic store, which has lower fees -- one of steams conditions is that you cant offer the game cheaper elsewhere, so we could never apply discounts on uplay) > we know for a fact Valve offers a lower cut to big studios now Valve has been openly hostile to my publisher for many years, perhaps this is the problem? Frequently unlisting our games.[1] We as a publisher do not officially respond to these things because they have better customer relations and a higher sentiment than we do, we would lose a PR battle, so we accept it and move on. This happens in negotiations too. > I would be shocked if the Playstation or XBox business wings were unwilling to negotiate a cut down in order to land a big, million-selling title They have almost all the power in those negotiations. The only bargaining power we have is if we have a very strongly rated title that we threaten to make exclusive. But in those cases we would lose more from _not_ selling on the platform than we would make back in the first-party cut. So it's lose-lose. 30% applies to in-game consumables too, anything processed by them as a payment provider. What games company do you work for? :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_The_Division_2 [1]: https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-1655676773 https://kotaku.com/ubisoft-pulls-big-games-from-steam-165567...

baud147258 7y ago
Perhaps your games on Steam would be better received if they didn't force the buyer to also install a crapware like Uplay on top of Steam and forcing to create another user account to play a game the buyer has just paid for (perhaps it has changed, I haven't bought an Ubi game in years).
- dijit 7y ago
  Regarding a second account; I'm afraid there's very little that can be done on that front, there was account linking added some time ago that meant you didn't need to maintain or continually log-in to uplay, you just create a linked account and forget about it- no second password needed I believe. So at least for usability it should not be any different than normal. If you have other specific complaints about uPlay then I'd be happy to hear them and feed them back to the team, since we're actually located in the same studio. Unfortunately uPlay does drive a significant amount of business value, handling things like entitlements so that each game doesn't have to re-implement them and allowing us to handle things like distribution of "other" types of clients, like development versions of the games for review, or debug enabled versions of games for debugging. It also allows for A/B testing of various features. As recently as 2017 there was consensus among ubisoft upper management that the perception of uPlay was bad, so more focus has been put on the user aspects, so in theory it should be much better now than it was, because before it was very business focused. But, as everything, people are happy to help if they can, nobody wants to make an awful system. Unless the problem is that you have to have a second launcher? that's usually peoples primary complaint. (and in those cases uPlay tries to hide itself and stay out of the way)