He has a revenue sharing agreement with the original creator of A Dark Room, which I think is 50%. Self-employment taxes plus regular taxes will be somewhere around 35%. Apple takes 30%. So, ($800k * (100 - 30)%) * 50% * (100 - 35)% is $182k. So not bad, but it's only $60k/yr for three years.

I really feel like Apple's 30% tax is not optimal and a lower % would actually stimulate more development for them

I'm sure Apple made a complex assessment to determine 30% as 'optimal'. The problem here is the oversupply of apps and the undersupply of paying customers - Apple has a duty to it's shareholders to skim that market as much as possible.

While it might appear unfair for Apple to take such a large cut of 'your' money, Apple looks at this the other way around: you cost them quite a lot of the money their customers are willing to spend on apps.

"I'm sure Apple made a complex assessment to determine 30% as 'optimal'."

Given that they've never actually run any large scale tests of the effect of different rates, it's probably safer to say this is a number that just 'feels right' - it doesn't look 'too greedy' up front, but isn't too low that shareholders might think they're leaving money on the table.

Dropping it to 22 or 25% for a couple of years would give some real numbers as to what the true impact would be. Even if the numbers were studied years ago, the current behaviour and ecosystem would be different.

As an apple shareholder, I would prefer that they explore other rates and then demonstrate that this is the best one.

The game theoretic problem is that they cannot explore other rates without giving away the fact. The 30% suddenly looks a lot less set in stone (and less initially justified), and cue incessant deluge of pushback.

> "and cue incessant deluge of pushback."

But really, where else are people going to go?

I don't think quantity, or rather the lack thereof, is the problem with any app store.

I give you my Armchair Expert of the Year Award. Congrats :-)

Must be nice to live in a world without having to give Apple 30%, insurance premiums, taxes, and royalties/partnership splits.

Take this comment in good spirit. We all make mistakes. Nothing but love for you. Go build awesome things. Hire a CPA for all the math related stuff.

I see this every day, people take the gross income number to the bank. In software world, the operational costs are less compared to other domains, but there are still costs and taxes.

Apple taking 30% cut is insane.

YESSS.. By itself it's just business right? The price of doing business. Don't like it? Go somewhere else. But that somewhere else is Android and Google ALSO charges 30%? Hmmm..

This duopoly situation isn't really good developers. Apple taking 30% cut and tossing it on their pile of 250b in cash; that's a depressing image.

It's interesting because Android is decidedly not locked in to Google's Play Store, yet it's entirely dominant in the Android app market regardless. Amazon's App Store is still kicking and side-loading is easy enough, but seems like very few users take advantage.

So don’t sell in the App Store. Set up all that distribution, collect correct sales taxes for every country in the world, accept payment from anywhere — deal with a potentially high rate of chargebacks and the fees associated with that, also create a search and discover platform so that people can find your game nobody ever heard of until they visited the App Store. Also, do it in nearly every language on the planet, accepting almost every currency. Also handle actually hosting your content and securing downloads to boot authorized devices.

I’m not sure 30% is expensive enough compared to doing all of that yourself.

Dark Room would not have sold $800,000 anywhere else. The author even said Google Play was an order of magnitude less than Apple.. so is an order of magnitude worth 30%? It seems like a lot of people would trip over a dollar to save a nickel.

You're right; my post was a mistake. I regret that I didn't read the article too carefully before posting. Alarmingly, instead of getting ignored or downvoted, I got a bunch of upvotes. What gives?

He also said he has 10 years of emergency funds saved. IOW, he's saving and not touching the retirement. Good for him!

He says he has a decade worth of emergency funds saved up.