Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by boogies on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @11:22PM
(#30786092)
> Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic.
What % of payments come through payment card companies vs. cash/crypto/checks/etc. ?
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by ehsankia on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @11:27PM
(#30786116)
What does that have to do with what I said? I'm not talking about payment companies at all. 30% is for platforms, not payment companies.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by boogies on Thursday March 24, 2022 @11:34AM
(#30791318)
It sounded like you were saying those platforms were justified in taking a 10× higher cut than payment companies because they provide services that developers would make fewer sales without and would have much more difficulty implementing and hosting themselves. But what makes payment companies not platforms? They seem similarly difficult to sell without, similarly difficult to reimplemement and host yourself, and just as valuable as store platforms for the same reasons you gave.
What you did there is subtle, but you're comparing apples to oranges. "payment card companies" charge 2-3%. It's platforms like Steam, Play store or App store that charge 30%. Those are not comparable.
I'm not arguing that 30% is the right number, but the analogy is very flawed. Ask anyone what % of their game sales comes from Steam vs their own website/itch/humble/epic. Let alone the dozens of other things that you get with a few lines of code (cloud saves, free in-game text/voice chat, workshop, marketplace, free download and easy patching, achievements, etc) and without having to host a single server or maintain anything. How much would it cost both in development but also hosting cost to code all of that yourself?