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> In fact Steam kills the whole "Apple store is a gouge" premise stone dead. It literally is just a distribution mechanism on desktop computers, where you absol

> In fact Steam kills the whole "Apple store is a gouge" premise stone dead. It literally is just a distribution mechanism on desktop computers, where you absolutely can side load apps and games as much as you like, and they're still considered very much worth 30% by the market. Are they? Look at how insane the backlash from the gaming community has been over Epic opening their own store, or how gamers acted when EA opened up Origin. Steam also provides significantly more for their 30% than Apple/Google do for their storefronts.

ralfd 6y ago
Apple/Google are providing the whole operating system and API development and in Googles case access to billions of devices and in Apples case 250 MB cloud storage per app user for developers (up to 1 Petabyte) and piracy protection.
- ece 6y ago
  The OS and APIs are part of the device users paid for. DRM for piracy protection can be had by any developer on any platform now a days, just look at Netflix. A person in charge of the Apple App Store told the US Congress it takes ~$100 million to run the App Store[1]. That's about $5/developer/year instead of $99/developer/year that Apple charges. [1] Page 345: https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
  - votepaunchy 6y ago
    Users don’t buy APIs. There are a small number of first party apps but iOS and Android provide considerable functionality specifically for developers.
    - ece 6y ago
      The User/Developer distinction is completely arbitrary. Any user can download Xcode/Android Studio and develop for their device which has the same libraries installed as an SDK including analytics/debugging/ads and such. Google used to charge developers a one time $25 fee, and Apple could charge as little as $5/developer/year to cover everything related to the App Store. The Swift compiler is common across a few Apple devices, and the device buyers are paying for that.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

ralfd 6y ago

Apple/Google are providing the whole operating system and API development and in Googles case access to billions of devices and in Apples case 250 MB cloud storage per app user for developers (up to 1 Petabyte) and piracy protection.

ece 6y ago
The OS and APIs are part of the device users paid for. DRM for piracy protection can be had by any developer on any platform now a days, just look at Netflix. A person in charge of the Apple App Store told the US Congress it takes ~$100 million to run the App Store[1]. That's about $5/developer/year instead of $99/developer/year that Apple charges. [1] Page 345: https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...
- votepaunchy 6y ago
  Users don’t buy APIs. There are a small number of first party apps but iOS and Android provide considerable functionality specifically for developers.
  - ece 6y ago
    The User/Developer distinction is completely arbitrary. Any user can download Xcode/Android Studio and develop for their device which has the same libraries installed as an SDK including analytics/debugging/ads and such. Google used to charge developers a one time $25 fee, and Apple could charge as little as $5/developer/year to cover everything related to the App Store. The Swift compiler is common across a few Apple devices, and the device buyers are paying for that.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]