Comment by AlexandrB
4 years ago
This may be pedantic, but Steam was collecting its 30% long before the App Store opened. Thought maybe that was inspired by Apple's cut of music revenues in the iTunes Store.
4 years ago
This may be pedantic, but Steam was collecting its 30% long before the App Store opened. Thought maybe that was inspired by Apple's cut of music revenues in the iTunes Store.
I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves.
Steam also don't engage in anti-competitive behavior and prevent billions of people from using alternative game distribution methods like Apple does.
What we need is real competition in the mobile app distribution market to determine whether or not that 30% is actually fair, efficient and competitive. As it stands, there is no competition in mobile app distribution.
That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have converged on the Play Store en masse on Android. These things benefit them, and the vast, vast majority appreciate those benefits more than they appreciate the benefits of managing multiple competing stores and side loading downloaded APKs.
You can't magic those preferences away. Even if you forced iOS to become an Android clone with multiple app stores and sideloading you can't force people to like those things. You'd just be giving an extra option to a very small subset of techies who have Android now to do that on already anyway. The market has spoken and it likes nice simple well managed choices because that's what the people want.
Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve?
Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense. Consoles, music stores, Steam, mobile app stores, they've all circled around about that number for a very long time. Some have tried around 20/80 to grab market share but it never worked, Nintendo tried 35/65 for a while before going to 30/70. In the end it's natural that competitive forces will tend to a convergence.
> That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading.
It's very true. Google acts in an anticompetitive manner to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market, as well.
Google prevents mobile app distribution competitors from competing with the Play Store on feature parity because user installable 3rd party mobile app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.
Also, iOS has 60% of the market in the US[1], which is the highest in the world. Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more app store revenue than the Play Store[2].
> Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense
Instead of guessing, we should let real competition in the mobile app distribution market increase efficiency and drive costs down to their true values instead of letting a cartel decide what they are.
[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
[1] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share
> Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve?
Because otherwise they are a populist company.
Imagine a company making clothes in sizes S..XL, but not XXL. Don't you think a company owes it to society to also offer the XXL size?
Instead of thinking "what is better for us?", a company should think "what is better for our customers?"
On the other hand, steam will not stop collecting data about you if you ask.
GOG has much better policies.
For example, GOG sells some games that try to phone home. Many of these were games/franchises that did business with GOG, then were bought.
Take a look at the reviews for Kerbal Space Program, or Stellaris for some of the shenanigans that happened after a game was released.
But because their stance is no-drm and you can play all their games offline, you can block them and the game will still run.
There is no such stance with steam.
> I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf. I have no such option if I want to buy an iOS app from a store or the developers themselves.
What percentage of that transaction do you think Best Buy would take?
Doesn't really matter to me when I can just go to another store, or on eBay or Facebook and buy it second-hand, or buy it directly from the developer.
>I could walk into Best Buy and buy the game I want off the shelf.
If you try doing it for any PC games released over the past decade, you are more likely than not gonna have a disk with some installable files and a Steam code in the box. Without that Steam code, there is no way for you to play the game.
At this point, there isn't any difference between buying directly from Steam, as opposed to "walking into Best Buy and buying the game you want off the shelf".
Steam does not take a cut from steam keys sold off steam.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
1 reply →
You pay 30% for all the hosting and listing and payment processing. But then you aren't required to use Steam to distribute your game — you could as well set up your own website. There's nothing preventing you. There's no predatory code signing on desktop OSes.
On the other hand, you can't sideload apps onto iOS devices. You HAVE to go through Apple. You either publish on the app store, or you don't have an iOS app. That's different. That's very different. That's antitrust-can't-happen-sooner different.
You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users.
> "That's different. That's very different
Is it? Why is it? You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside. What's the specific difference between that and iOS, other than "Apple's ecosystem and customers are desirable, so I want to use it" and "I don't want to pay for it"?
> You aren't required to use the Apple store to distribute your product. You can sell to Android users and desktop/laptop users.
You aren't making much sense. You won't have any semblance of adoption if you don't have presence on iOS. Except maybe in India where iOS market share is tiny.
> You can't sell software to run on Kindle Paperwhite even though it's a full computer inside.
It's an appliance. It's marketed as a device to serve one purpose — read books. Amazon isn't making apps for it either, as far as the user is concerned, there's no notion of application software on these things.
By the way, washing machines and microwaves also have a full computer in them — there's CPU, RAM, and ROM. Yes, tiny and underpowered. Probably not quite powerful enough to run Doom. Computers nonetheless, technically.
Yet no one raises any objections about not being able to run arbitrary code on them. Precisely because of the marketing and expectations.
> What's the specific difference between that and iOS
iPhones and iPads are marketed as general-purpose computing devices. They are not appliances by any stretch of imagination. Yet they are crippled because Apple has knowingly and deliberately put in a limitation so they only run code that was signed by Apple. This limits their general-purposefulness. This forces developers who don't want or need the hosting and listing still go through the app store.
35 replies →
There is no difference.
Just like I can't run third party, unapproved apps on a Tesla, SNES, Gameboy, Samsung TV etc. Or even every website that has a marketplace and supports plugins e.g. Shopify.
Your argument rests on the strange assumption that people who are against IOS restricting apps on the iPhone would for some reason support Amazon's restrictions on Kindle apps.
5 replies →
You can side load apps onto your iOS devices.
You just need to publish on the store in order to sell to other users.
No you can't. Literally the only situation when you don't have to sign your app with an Apple-issued certificate is when the device is jailbroken and has signature enforcement disabled.
You're probably referring to one of these things:
- You can install any app on your own device. This requires an Apple ID (but no $99 membership) and a certificate that Xcode automatically gets from Apple. The certificate is valid for 7 days, after which the app no longer launches. The bundle ID of the app also has to be globally unique.
- There's "enterprise" distribution that requires a developer ID and a certificate. Subject to terms of use. Apple can revoke it at any time. Sometimes Apple turns a blind eye to the misuse of this, but, again, it can and does revoke these certificates remotely disabling any apps signed with them.
You can temporarily install your apps on your own device. They expire after 7 days, and you can't have more than 10 such apps installed simultaneously.
And just to be complete, there is little preventing other people from creating their own Steam (many do) or not using Steam at all (developers can publish their apps directly to users). This is not the case with the App store.
Older app stores and especially physical retail collected a lot more than 30%.
Steam charges that amount because it brought a customer to you.
If I did my own marketing to gamers and they downloaded the game from my website I would have to pay 0% to any intermediary.