I'm pretty sure that 99% of apps on the store make so little revenue that it's not worth it to pay someone competent to review them, especially with all the ad supported free apps. So a very low percentage of apps pay for the cost of running the app store.

A fixed filing fee would level that imbalance.

Developers pay $25 or so on sign up.

And after paying those $25 they are free to spam the review team with hundreds of submissions? Doesn't sound sustainable to me.

If App Stores charged a fee per submission, that would drastically cut down on spam submissions, and free up resources for those of us who actually put a lot of effort into our apps.

Once you set a fee I know apps will be updated less often, it'd be sad for open-source apps - which I'd say are the most useful of all apps on Google Play.

So a fee on initial submission... updates not charged. Will still put a crimp in the spam-app floods.

If you spend hundreds of hours working on something, paying a reasonable fee to publish it is not going to stop anyone.

Which barely covers a competent person sipping a coffee whilst glancing at the title of your app.

Realistically, if you spent 20 hours developing the app, you're already $3000 invested on this project. Another $100-$500 isn't THAT big of a deal when you look at it in those terms

You're assuming 20 hours is worth the same to everyone. When I was a college student, even $100 would have turned me off from publishing an app.

That’s why most edu addresses get huge breaks