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I'm a full-time developer of Roblox games. It's wild that Apple or Google make as much from my games as I do. Obviously it still works out well enough since I'

• itake 2y ago
  why is it wild? Microsoft keeps 30% of xbox store sales. Apple, Google, MS, etc. play a massive part in attracting users to the platform.
  • ninepoints 2y ago
    Console user spend and user acquisition costs are not even remotely similar to the corresponding values in the mobile ecosystem.
  • justinclift 2y ago
    Visa and Mastercard provide entire global payment platforms, yet only (generally?) take a small fee per transaction. Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every transaction.
    • vishnumohandas 2y ago
      > Apple seems to do a lot less Not suggesting that this warrants a 30% cut, but unlike payment gateways Apple also provides discoverability and distribution.
      • justinclift 2y ago
        > also provides discoverability and distribution. Apple seems to be incredibly poor at discovery, so that's not a point in their favour. Distribution could be done by any number of other CDNs, as will likely be done by the new EU based App stores. What's the bet those won't be charging ~30% transaction fees to cover things? And they won't even have the same scale as Apple. ;)
      • tjoff 2y ago
        They lock their users in a walled garden where only they can provide discoverability and distribution.
    • cenamus 2y ago
      But doesn't that have way more to do with (EU) regulation? I thought that they take quite a significant chunk in the US
      • justinclift 2y ago
        That a bit unclear. Are you meaning Visa/Mastercard charge less in the EU due to EU regulations? If that's what you're meaning, then I simply don't know as I've not heard that before. :)
        • nottorp 2y ago
          Someone in the food chain does take less in some EU countries. Not all. The commissions are capped by law in some parts, but not others. As a small sample, in RO i think a large store chain pays like 0.5%. The consequence is credit card reward programs are either non existent or something like 0.1% cashback. The other consequence is you can pay by card almost anywhere. On the other hand I've been to NL and small stores simply did not take Visa/MC because it was too expensive for them. Guessing the visa/mc charges weren't capped there.
          • com 2y ago
            They’re all covered by identical regulations. Culturally, though, small retailers may still believe that credit card fees are higher than they actually are. They may be concerned about refund and chargeback processes. Or, their gateway either cannot offer credit cards on their POS terminals for technical or compliance reasons, or the retailer simply hasn’t enabled the payment methods. It’s not regulation in NL that blocks small retailers from taking V or MC.
            • nottorp 2y ago
              High fees is what they told me :) But then I was that weird tourist with a Visa and a MC...
          • ccozan 2y ago
    • ffgjgf1 2y ago
      Steam also takes 30% despite all platforms it operates on being entirely open. So it doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable
      • justinclift 2y ago
        Steam reportedly puts in a bunch of effort to earn it though. Whereas Apple's relationship seems more predatory/antagonistic (at best).
        • dagmx 2y ago
          You think Steam puts in more effort than providing graphics APIs, system frameworks for everything from networking to controller handling, UI libraries, educational sessions and security critical updates? Like, one may argue that the 30% isn’t valid (and it’s 15% for the majority of devs) but to say Steam does more is absurd. I’m curious if people who hold this opinion have actually been involved in the process of releasing apps on either platform. And to be clear, I know valve does contribute to gaming on Linux but that’s single digit market share, so is definitely a far cry from the 30%.
          • Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
            I mean, Steam did release the Steam Deck, so yes it provides everything you described. I'm not sure why we are focusing on the 30%, the problem is that facebook, a very rich company, get charged 0.
            • ffgjgf1 2y ago
              Steam Deck is mostly standard Linux (although most stuff Valve does is gets merged into the kernel/free packages etc. so it’s hard to disentangle the these, but not exactly comparable to building a platform almost from scratch) > the problem is that facebook, a very rich company, get charged 0. Just like every other company using the same business model (i.e. ads instead of IAP)?
    • diatone 2y ago
      Apples to oranges. Card networks have more than three stakeholders to work with per transaction, apply fees indiscriminately from milk to digital music subscriptions, and operate at truly staggering volumes.
      • justinclift 2y ago
        You're right. Visa and Mastercard seem to do a lot more, yet charge a very small fraction of the amount.
        • vlovich123 2y ago
          Yet Canada has Interac and India has UPI which nationalize all digital transactions while charging even less. In Europe they’re much more heavily regulated and this charge even less than in the States. So if within their own industry Visa and Mastercard overcharge like crazy, especially when they can, what makes you so sure that they’re a good counter example for a completely different industry? Especially when competitors seem to be charging a very similar rate for a similar service? That being said, it is a fair point when you consider that retailers and other similar product middle men tend to charge 1-3%, but it’s important to also consider that Apple position’s itself as a luxury product and brand where 30% markup isn’t actually out of line.
          • diatone 2y ago
            Exactly right. I’m not against competitor analysis here. But let’s at least compare against a basket of structurally similar offerings instead of cherry picking companies whose rake happens to be an order of magnitude lower in percentage terms.
        • diatone 2y ago
          My point, which hasn’t really been addressed, is that “more” isn’t a meaningful term when comparing card networks and software app stores, because the markets are structurally different.
      • wiseowise 2y ago
    • booi 2y ago
      > Apple seems to do a lot less, but wants ~1/3 of every transaction. I would bet Apple has put more into R&D for iPhones, iPads and iOS than the entire enterprise value of visa and mastercard put together. If anything, they've worked for it more than visa/mastercard who are merely rails with distribution. Most of the heavy lifting, risk and work in the card ecosystem is done by the issuers (banks et. al.)
      • thorncorona 2y ago
        I think you underestimate the difficulty of competing against visa or mastercard. Visa and mastercard are logistical masterpieces. Think of how much legal work needs to be done in order to be compliant in every country in the world.
        • netsharc 2y ago
          Since they're giants, I wonder how much of the compliance is the other way: countries being strong-armed to comply with their terms.
          • lukan 2y ago
            "countries being strong-armed to comply with their terms." I suppose that is just another way of describing "legal work" in this context.
      • croes 2y ago
        The high margins of iPhones and iPad gets already already justified with Apple's R&D costs. And it would be morally wrong to put that costs on the app developers, without their apps the store is useless. The lack of apps killed Windows Phone.
      • conductr 2y ago
        If desktop pc users saw Microsoft taking a third of every transaction from yourmoms.com to Amazon.com because they did the heavy lifting of popularizing the home pc and web browser usage, I think you’d realize how ridiculous that argument sounds. They built it to sell something else, operating systems and then some ancillary stuff. They became one of the most valuable companies in the world off just that. Just like the iOS was built to sell phones. They make plenty off phones. They’ve made Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world too. Access to an App Store has become a requirement of a modern phone, so they wouldn’t sell many without it. But it doesn’t mean they should be able to tax the entire economy so heavily. Just like how running a browser is a requirement of modern browsers for an operating system, but that doesn’t mean the operating system should be allowed to tax the entire economy of activity that takes place on said operating system.
    • myspy 2y ago
      Only 3% of the 30% go to payment processing. Hence why they still want 27% when developers choose their own payment system. The 27% are seen similar to Sony and Nintendo as fees to be on a platform which has wide reach but also gives tools and does stuff to enable app distribution. Is that too much? I don‘t know but it‘s what all appear to do. The platform politics didn‘t evolve as fast as the tech though. So what about apps like Patreon, Netflix, Spotify, that was never on the table in 2008.
      • maccard 2y ago
        The 3% payment charge is the transaction fee, but that doesn’t take into account the actual handling of the rest of the transaction lifecycle, like managing refunds, or chargebacks. A single chargeback will cost you $25 whether it’s successful or not (plus refunding the transaction if you lose), but on google play and co it’s just refunded.
        • Jensson 2y ago
          > but that doesn’t take into account the actual handling of the rest of the transaction lifecycle, like managing refunds, or chargebacks They do, which is why credit cards take that much, cost of chargebacks is a part of the transaction fee.
  • blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Wild meaning unfair, perhaps?
  • bemmu 2y ago
    Absolutely, it's better to have a smaller slice of a bigger pie, which is why I'm OK with this. What I meant by "wild" is that in this case, the dev of the game is the one receiving that ~30% slice. Apple+Google get about the same as the dev does.
    • throwaway984393 2y ago
      [dead]
  • MindSpunk 2y ago
    Google gives you an App Store and maintain the OS that other hardware vendors (and sometimes themselves) implement hardware around. They take a 30% cut for distribution in their special app store and not much else. Microsoft and Sony take similar cuts for access to their game consoles. In return they provide: - High quality, robust developer APIs. - High quality debuggers, graphics debuggers and CPU+GPU profiling tools with in-depth access to hardware counters - Networking libraries for matchmaking, and a network backend for tunneling network traffic via their online services - True development kit hardware with expanded resources for debugging tools - High quality documentation and direct support - GPU drivers that actually work - Payment processing - All for a hardware platform that is typically sold at or below BOM cost for the initial launch of the device Google provides distribution via the Play Store, and only for about ~4GB of app before they force you to use your own CDN because they have a limit on the size of the app bundle they'll distribute. There's likely things I'm not aware of that Google provides for app developers rather than game developers, but if we're comparing to game consoles then I'm going to compare tool for tool. Apple's tooling is better, largely because they have way more control over the target hardware and software environment, but they take an additional cost via their highly restrictive app guidelines.
    • MindSpunk 2y ago
      The contrast is stark compared to another of Google's own projects: Stadia. Much of this comes second hand as I wasn't on this particular team when they were working on Stadia bring-up for proprietary AAA engine (I joined about 2 weeks before Stadia was officially canned). But the quality of support from Stadia for developers was leagues above what you get from Android. Every few weeks I'll hear from other team members how good it was working with Google for Stadia. The tooling was great. We got developer kit hardware. We had documentation and direct support channels and Google was actively managing outreach and development on tooling to ease transitioning into their systems (Google was one of the biggest driving forces behind DXC's SPIR-V target). Compare this against the same people commenting on the Android experience and it's the complete opposite. We're left out to dry with poor support while trying to target devices that barely work. What's the difference? Google actually had to fight to get us to come to their store. They had competition and weren't acting as a toll collector to a captive market. Game developers had the choice to tell Google to kick rocks, Xbox and PlayStation aren't going anywhere. Google had no choice but to play ball with good support and fair pricing. No such pressure exists on Mobile, and they crank the toll as a result.
  • wolpoli 2y ago
    Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo subsidize the development and cost of their dedicated gaming system from the 30% cut of the store sales. It's very different on the mobile side: Apple sells iOS devices at full cost. With Android, it gets even more mucky as Samsung, the hardware vendor, gets 0% of the sales on their handset (unless the user, for some reason, uses the Samsung store), and Google gets the full 30% for only their software work. So the fact that Google gets 30% is wild.
    • nottorp 2y ago
      > Google gets the full 30% for only their software work Not that I trust Google (my personal phones are Apple) but how do you think a phone with all software made by Samsung will work? Every time I lay my hands on one of their phones (and I have one on my desk for Android development) something annoys me. They somehow think they know how to do UI/UX but they still haven't learned after all these years of "customizing" Android. So yes, Google deserves some money. Not 30% but some.
    • aikinai 2y ago
      So if you sell your hardware at a profit, you forfeit your right to profit off the platform post-sale? Nintendo never sells hardware at a loss either, by the way. And your Samsung comment doesn’t make sense. Samsung gets the operating system for free and then sells hardware for whatever profit they can get for it. Plus all of the post-sale platform services profit they can manage, just like Google and Apple. What is wild?
      • wolpoli 2y ago
        I never meant to imply that once a company sell the hardware for profit, they forfeit the rights to profit off the platform. It's really about market power. The two dominant mobile leaders have enough market power to increase their take to 50%, for example, arguing that's how much traditional retailers take, if not for the risk of attracting government interventions. The intention is to point out that simple arguments of 'Xbox is charging 30%, so it is fine that the mobile platforms do the same thing' failed to take into account of the nuances of the situation. Isn't it weird that these platforms are all charging 30% even through all these platforms have different business models, with different cost structure and provide different values? I hadn't even talked about how Microsoft has been getting no money off sales on Steam when it is their platform, because they hadn't (yet?) lock down the platform. Finally, Nintendo did sell the Wii U at a loss. [0] [0]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-still-selling-wii-u-at-a-loss https://www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-still-selling-wii-u-a...
  • saurik 2y ago
    FWIW, there are large publishers which successfully negotiate with the ilk of Microsoft[1] and Sony[2] to get a better revenue split, as consoles in fact have more functional competition than mobile phone app stores: people who own a gaming console might could reasonably own a second one if they were interested in some game that was only available on one console or the other; this simply doesn't happen with phones, as only a small handful of particularly-crazy power users would ever carry around a second cell phone. If you want to not release on Xbox unless Microsoft gives you a better deal, it doesn't sound anywhere near as ridiculous to tell your potential customers "you'll have to also own a Playstation" as if you tried to explain to people that to use your new social network they have to also own and carry around an Android phone (or, worse, whatever the third option might be... is there even a third option anymore that would make any sense? ;P). You can tell that Apple has some insane amount of fundamentally market-distorting power as they seriously charge large publishers -- the ones you would expect to have the most leverage -- more than smaller ones; and, with maybe a sole exception of WeChat, we have never heard of anyone getting a better deal out of them, ever. [1]: https://x.com/tomwarren/status/1671981463040819200?s=46 https://x.com/tomwarren/status/1671981463040819200?s=46 [2]: https://x.com/twthereddragon/status/1672270407179665409?s=46 https://x.com/twthereddragon/status/1672270407179665409?s=46
  • h0l0cube 2y ago
    I never get this argument, but following its logic, is Apple and Microsoft being really charitable by not gatekeeping and taking a cut for every paid-for application installed on their respective desktop platforms? To answer my own question, it just seems that the status quo has inertia. In the way that we don't pay for online news, social media, or search, similarly, we've just accepted a large chunk of our purchase is feeding the app store. Also, from memory, Xbox/Sony consoles are loss leaders to recoup profits from store sales. I'm not sure if that holds for Google and Apple phones, but I'd be more okay with app store fees if it did.
    • pbhjpbhj 2y ago
      Is the "large chunk of our purchase ... feeding the app store" or is it going to shareholder profits? Appstores seem super inefficient if they cost so much to feed (ie run/maintain).
      • h0l0cube 2y ago
        > feeding the app store" or is it going to shareholder profits Sure. It's all just revenue growth. Sans some anti-competition regulation, it's the prerogative of a business to charge as much as the market will bear, as much as it can be sustained, by whatever legal means necessary.
  • croes 2y ago
    The games and apps play a massive part in attracting users. That's why MS bought game studios to get more games and therefore users to the Xbox.
  • raxxorraxor 2y ago
    They do play a massive part because their platforms are designed to lock users in. You do not really have an many alternatives to using their stores on console or mobile platforms. In case of consoles or Apple there are none. They don't attract people, they gatekeep solutions/entertainment. It is the exact other way around, the products on their store attract people into their environment.
  • heisenbit 2y ago
    Apple is not attracting. Saying Apple is attracting with their compute platform would be saying Intel is attracting with their compute platform. Apple is spending next to nothing to attract users to Roblox but is acting as an unwanted gatekeeper to users that paid Apple to use their products.
  • whywhywhywhy 2y ago
    Ok why doesn’t Microsoft get 30% of revenue of Steam purchases or Adobe CC subs? Why doesn’t Apple get 30% of revenue from purchases through the Safari browser in MacOS? After all they play a massive part in making those purchases possible.
    • itake 2y ago
      In your example, MS and Apple do not curate, provide support, managing licensing, or provide payment support.
      • whywhywhywhy 2y ago
        Ok so why can't I take care of those things myself on iOS? Pretty sure I can handle my own curation, licensing and payment overhead for 30% more revenue.
• lynx23 2y ago
  Would you rather do the hardware/OS platform yourself as well? I know, the big ones are always "evil", but... How about being real?
  • thomas112 2y ago
    [dead]
  • katzinsky 2y ago
    You mean like most Linux distros? Yeah it's great.