Comment by heavyset_go
4 years ago
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
Even if what you say is indeed the case (which is very possible), it still leaves a major question on the table.
What's the point if you (as a customer) end up paying the same price at the end of the day anyway, and you still have to use Steam DRM? The only difference in your case is that the cut is going to Best Buy instead of Steam.