If only those games weren't infested with micro/macro transactions to manipulate players out of their money in the first place. Mobile gaming is a cesspool of ads, gambling, greed, data collection, and bullshit all of which has been slowly spreading like a cancer to gaming on every other platform for decades. I'm not happy about Apple and Google demanding a cut of the action either, screw them too, but making these tactics even more profitable for shitty mobile game devs isn't going to benefit players.
Apple did this to itself. Reportedly it was Jobs' opinion turned policy that Apple don't do games or pornography.
Exactly this policy and their interference to app developers created a selection pressure and a cutout hole in shape of "only slightly gamelike && technically not pornographic && in high demand", and the category of apps more accurately represented as "strip clubs with casinos with no cash-out" filled the vacuum like a Ghibli film blob monster.
Early iOS games were more game-like. Apps like SNES remakes, flappy birds and music games, were more common, but they all converged down and down into porn territory.
It doesn't happen naturally; not even pornographic game markets, let alone Steam or Itch, aren't as badly infested with gambling as App Store. It only happened artificially by how Apple ran it over the past ~15 years.
Microtransaction infested games were inevitable even if mobile gaming didn’t exist. Like, of the top 10 highest lifetime grossing games, 3 are arcade pay-per-play (the original microtransaction), 6 are f2p that got their start on PC, and only one is mobile-first / only.
Last year, 58% of PC gaming revenue was from microtransactions, and that percentage is only growing.
> Early iOS games were more game-like. Apps like SNES remakes, flappy birds and music games, were more common, but they all converged down and down into porn territory.
Game devs discovered pretty quickly that, Apple having set the initial expectation that an iOS game should cost $0.99, the only viable way to run a business on a mobile platform was a f2p/exploitation/casino model.
At least they give the user the option to pay or not pay, unlike Apple that forces developers to not have any other option.
Is there anything wrong with walled gardens hypothetically taxing the shady microtransaction-infested unregulated-gambling games and data-mining apps 5x and using that to correspondingly reduce fees for honest indie developers?
(Setting aside the issue of defining who are the goodies and who are the baddies in a way that does not enable the baddies to purely technically comply with the goodie guidelines while remaining baddies.)
What exactly are these gardens walling against if they have microtransaction-infested unregulated-gambling games and data-mining apps?
Malware, for one.
The walled gardens don't give a shit about the "honest indies", they make 30% off of the micro transactions while doing nothing. Billions in effortless money.
>while doing nothing
Designing entire hardware, software, and backend platforms and investing billions of dollars into them every year is not nothing. If what these companies built took no work, try making your own platform to release games on and see how little work it truly needs.
Indeed—try to make a platform where a solo developer can create an app that is then distributed to almost the entire planet, where anyone can find, buy and install it (with a nearly 100% guarantee that it will work) with a click, and get paid for it without having to open branches in every jurisdiction and deliver paperwork for N different, constantly changing tax regimes.
> Designing entire hardware
Designing the hardware does not entitle you to extracting more money from anything. If you don't want to lose money on your hardware, don't sell it at a loss. (Which Apple isn't doing, nor are any of the Android device manufacturers.) I haven't seen Dyson try to extract 30% off of every hairdressing salon that uses their dryers.
> software, and backend platforms
Are made to attract users on the platform. With the intention of making money from it after. Cool. Quick question, do you pay for Chrome, or Firefox ? They invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year into it, how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ?
> investing billions of dollars into them every year is not nothing
The billions have been invested initially. The ongoing costs of running the App Store / Play Store are not even close to a billion, especially not for Google that already owns all the network infrastructure necessary to run it.
>If what these companies built took no work, try making your own platform to release games on and see how little work it truly needs.
Sure, that's very simple: take any open publishing store on Android, and ask yourself why noone uses them for games delivery. I'll even add a hint: it's not because they don't offer diff based assets upgrades.
> The walled gardens don't give a shit about the "honest indies", they make 30% off of the micro transactions while doing nothing. Billions in effortless money.
Do you give a shit about honest indie devs? Putting them in quotes says you probably don’t.
If you did, perhaps you’d find that this is an obvious path to a better state of affairs that to walled garden operators is zero cost (or even profitable), financially and reputationally, while making it more economically viable to make good games that don’t use dark patterns to keep your kid glued to the screen and regularly asking for money to exchange for some in-game coins and lootboxes.
Ah yes, putting words inbetween quotes to, uh, quote someone is a very novel usage of quotes. As an aside, being indie isn't a guarantee for honestly: I have seen come incredibly scummy behavior from indies.
> zero cost (or even profitable)
Having to handle _more_ developers isn't zero cost, but let's assume they actually sell games and indeed, make profit. That would be great! I would love a mobile ecosystem where there is a variety of things, where my phone is an actual viable platform for more than just browsing online and shitposting on HN.
>financially
You fundamentally misunderstand just how much money gachas generate every year. You could release a dozen Hollow Knights, a dozen Balatros, a dozen Stardew Valleys every year, and you'd still make less money than taking 30% off of a _single_ gacha. Genshin Impact grossed $10 billion last year. WuWa, ZZZ, HSR all gross close to half a billion each, each year. Pokemon TCG is on track for 1.5bil. And that's just gachas: games like Call of Duty Mobile and other just print out money.
There are no universes, neither in Apple or Google's imagination (which is very locked in on how much money they're making right now, as opposed to how much they could) or in anyone reasonable's thoughts where indie games take off so much they overtake any amount of profit they're currently making. There's no catching up to the amount of content a team like Genshin's puts out every three months.
> reputationally
If you think Apple gives a single shit about reputation when they're the only dealer in town, I have news for you. If you think Google gives a single shit about reputation when 90% of traffic goes through their store anyways, I have news for you.
When games went "free to play", platform commissions for in-app purchases (sometimes misleadingly called "payment processing charges") were the only way that walled-garden game stores could make money from them.
The irony is that Japanese game platforms have been using the walled-garden licensing and platform fee business model for more than 40 years[1], and it continues today in the Nintendo eShop and PSN store. I doubt Nintendo and Sony are going to reduce their platform fees just because developers don't like them.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_(Nintendo)
[2] https://www.1d3.com/blog/platform-fees
Interestingly enough the Wikipedia article claims that Nintendo introduced DRM and licensing to combat shovelware. But shovelware on Nintendo platforms has continued to be a problem from the Wii to the current Switch eShop.
You are 100% right! The difference is that a phone is necessity that tends to a monopoly, unlike say a PlayStation or a handheld game platform. But no question in the game space where you can choose platforms, a walled garden is great. That's why Steam is really good, and if it wasn't you could get your games from the Windows app store, or the Epic Store..
The phone/necessity part of smartphones seems largely independent from the game store part, since you can usually choose from multiple wireless providers, sms/mms (and now rcs) all work, email works, and web browsers also work.
How dare they charge for that slot machine!
More seriously: There have always been mobile games that have a purchase price or ask for a single payment. You could find one right now. The vast majority of popular apps have in game transactions. Game developers just want to get paid for the work they do.
Interestingly, in the Apple App Store, there is no option to filter by "paid". Only free. I want an option to filter by "paid, no IAP". Actually, I don't mind IAp for things like new levels and such. It's just so badly abused by mobile games.
Apple made one concession to consumer protection law and the FTC by changing the "free" button to "get", but I'm sure they know how those slot machines work, and where the money comes from.
At one point in-app purchases were listed clearly and prominently so they were easy to inspect (and hopefully embarrassing for nonsense like $99 wheelbarrows of smurfberries[1].) Now it seems like IAP rates are hidden below the fold, unfortunately.
[1] https://www.pipelinecomics.com/smurfberries-apple-app-store-...
I'm not saying the Apple store isn't responsible for the problems of free to play. They really are. Apple has a memory of when their hardware was beholden to software like Adobe or Microsoft and they designed the store to avoid that problem. It really favors cheap apps, and they used to really discourage offering a sample and then unlocking the full app for a purchase. This was supposed to be so you didn't have "bait and switch" but really it just trained people to think no app was worth paying for. Even though they did pay so much for loot boxes..
So now there's an alternative way to pay. Let's be happy about that.
Every so often Apple will themselves feature a selection of popular pay-once-and-get-it-all games in the store as an ad capsule.
... actually, I just checked, and if you scroll down enough in the Games tab on your iPhone's App Store app, they seem to be running it now under "Pay Once & Play". Might be worth a look.
It's a shame they hide these things below the fold.
Title of the article itself seems to have changed to:
70% of Japan smartphone games bypass in-app payments to avoid IT giants
I think it should be:
70% of Japan smartphone games bypass in-app payments to avoid unnecessarily additional costs to customers
Or more inflammatorily:
70% of Japan smartphone games bypass in-app payments to avoid unnecessarily parasitic middlemen
For parasitic games that certainly aren't just illegal casinos
To be fair the ubiquitous _pachinko_ parlours of Japan are pretty much exactly that. You gamble with worthless tokens, that an unrelated business next door just so happens to be willing to trade for items of value.
They are not exactly that. Pachinko with ball exchange store next door lets you cash out. Gacha games you gamble for digital garbage you will be never be able to cash out.
The 30% cut hurts every developer, not just the minority building bad games that make the world worse.
Smartphone game stores aren't the only option for game developers. They could go with Nintendo eShop (30% platform fee), or Sony PSN store (30% platform fee), or Xbox store (30% platform fee). Hmm, maybe there's a trend here?
More seriously, Android does allow sideloading and alternative game stores. There are also subscription services like Xbox game pass, Amazon Luna, and Apple Arcade, though I don't know their exact payment models. And PC gaming still exists - there are popular game stores like Steam that take a smaller cut.
I think it's hard to make money on games on any platform, but Steam does seem to have a vibrant indie game scene.
yeah they're fighting over who gets more of our blood
Well good news, the fight has been won by Only Fans, Fan Duel, Robinhood, Coinbase, etc. But keep your pearls handy to clutch over loot boxes.
I edited the title to make it more informative. The original was confusing because I thought it might be about Softbank or SNS (social media) firms like LINE.
Apple and Google insist their walled gardens are needed for user safety and security, but they can't even catch popular apps violating their own policies. It casts (even more) doubt on their ability to screen for malware, phishing, etc, which are already rampant.
You're not wrong, but Apple and Google probably remember things like the Facebook VPN fiasco of 2018, where Facebook's VPN app was banned from the app store for breaking privacy rules – and then they turned around and abused enterprise app certificates to sidestep the ban.
> By installing Onavo, millions unknowingly granted Facebook full access to their digital activity. App usage, browsing habits, and precise timestamps were silently collected. Facebook VPN didn’t just observe its own users - it tracked behavior across rival platforms like YouTube, Amazon, and Snapchat.
> ... Engineers exploited Onavo’s infrastructure to install a root certificate on phones, masking Snapchat’s servers to decrypt user activity.
This is an obvious security hole that should never have existed, but the fact that Facebook eagerly exploited it, while abusing VPNs for tracking and enterprise certs for sidestepping app store privacy rules, shows the threat landscape.
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/news/when-facebook-used-vpn...
The DOJ/FTC need to end app stores on phones.
Two companies can't own all of computing.
Smartphones are the internet for most people, and two companies have installed comprehensive paywalls and distribution gateways.
It's unnatural how large and complete their monopolies are.
Call your legislator and demand web installs without scare walls and hidden developer flags. With no phony restrictions on app type, technology choice, JIT/runtimes, or UI adherence.
We need complete freedom on mobile.
I agree, but we shouldn't end app stores entirely. I don't want to go back to the days of Windows in the 2000s where you always had to download random executables from websites to install software.
This is 2025 and still the way it works. I've never seen a lambda user install a package manager.
>had to download random executables from websites
I don't remember being forced to use a randomizer for downloading executables...
Actually, people are more likely to install random apps from an app store, because the OS promotes that behavior.
>We need complete freedom on mobile.
Technically alternative stores exist on Android.
On IOS you can argue customers are paying for security.
Stopping Billy from downloading a key logger is a corporate choice Apple makes.
If you need to install random binaries from the internet your free to buy android device or a cheap computer.
iOS reduces the attack surface.
> Technically alternative stores exist on Android.
You have to navigate five settings menus deep to enable the ability to even install them, and after that the OS scares you into thinking it'll turn your phone into a grenade.
Unless you're 0.0000001% of users, you will never do this.
Google knows what they're doing. It's the tyranny of defaults.
> The DOJ/FTC need to end app stores on phones.
Game developers like Epic would certainly like to pay less money to Apple and Google than they pay to Nintendo and Sony (and Microsoft for the Xbox game store), but what's the legal argument for terminating Apple and Google's walled-garden game store businesses? And doesn't Android already allow sideloading?
> Smartphones are the internet for most people, and two companies have installed comprehensive paywalls and distribution gateways.
The web is the internet for most people, and neither Apple nor Google have installed paywalls and distribution gateways for third-party web pages. (Apple does restrict browser engines, but ironically that might be the only thing preventing a chromium monoculture.)
Phones aren't rinky-dinky little games. Games, that mind you, have over a dozen choices in terms of platforms and are highly competitive.
Phones are used for everything in life. Finding jobs, finding romance, ordering food, paying for things, navigating. You can't even pull up a menu at a modern restaurant without a phone.
Phones are the entirety of computing for over 50% of Americans. Are we going to let two companies own the entirety of that and tax it?
Imagine if our cars were like phones. When you take your Honda out for a spin, if it couldn't visit certain destinations. Or if your car taxed McDonalds (which passes the cost onto you) every time you stop by. Imagine if it shoved its view of what it wants you to see in front of you, forcing you to take detours or miss your objective entirely. That's what our lax regulatory environment has allowed to happen to computing.
And yet, people keep buying i Phones. They have a choice. And they are opting in to a closed platform. Likewise with PlayStations and Wiis versus computer games.
Consumers largely don't care and are not interested in esoteric concepts like free software. I would be careful about dictating how things should work.
Both platforms are closed. There is no choice.
Do you know how difficult it is to exercise your freedom to install software on an Android?
Both of these companies know what they're doing. They've co-opted computing and have locked it down and owned it.
Yes, gacha games are always seeking the most optimal path from the player's wallet to the corporate checking account.
True, but Apple and Google were never any impediment to that beyond just skimming some off the top.
30% is not skimming.
It's a platform fee.
like a tax from corporations.
We shouldn't even be calling gacha games as "games." They're "give us money" buttons with flashy animations and loud sound effects. Perhaps begware is a better term?
I just don’t understand - where the 30% take away by store number is coming from and why giants are fighting tooth and nail to keep it.
Obviously I don’t know economics and costs behind it, but from very uninformed point of view it feels that even 10% would still give quite a profit to stores, even after processor fees.
IIRC Epic Games internally calculated that for their store the break-even point was around 9%. (They mostly run it as a loss leader at a default 12%, but with tons of giveaways and deals, so that percent can go as low as 0%.) So I think somewhere around 15-18% might feel “fair” to me, trying to take into account the value of the platform.
Why wonder whats fair when we could let the market decide?
E-feudalism isn't capitalism.
The gatekeepers are governments without democratic representation. Wondering what fair exploitation looks like is choosing a warped perspective.
That is exactly what happens if they can enforce payments: "you don't get to be on our store if you're bypassing this"
But it isn't what is happening if they are staying on the platform's marketplaces and also bypassing payments. There is no "market" effect there.
Not saying I agree with the 30%, but third party app stores exist. That is the market avenue (and no one uses them).
When two entities control essentially the whole "market" for mobile OSes and associated app stores, and use their position to force their app stores on everyone, you no longer have a market. If we just forcibly split Google and Apple into smaller companies with separate app stores then maybe we could see what markets would do.
"There is no market effect"? Why do the market effects disappear if some of the players don't play completely according to the desires of other players? Why couldn't it be that the optimum includes some amount of fee dodging?
Retail stores have always charged 30-40% so that's where the number comes from. You can see the exact breakdown in Europe: it's x% for payment processing, y% for app review/downloads/updates, and z% for recommendations etc. They're fighting to hold on to it because it's billions of dollars of profit. Obviously the app stores do not need or deserve 30% but that argument could apply to any profitable company.
30% has been the video games cut going as far back as the NES. Mobile app stores adopted that standard figure.
because the app store needs to build hardware cartridges....
> even 10% would still give quite a profit to stores
In other words, 30% would give quite a profit to stores, plus 20%. That's why giants are fighting tooth and nail to keep it.
30% on the App Store was an answer to Nokia’s Ovi store some 70%!
Damn that's absolutely ridiculous. It makes me feel less bad for Nokia CEO's burning platform speech.
The fact you're thinking 10% is good enough is why you're not part of the cohort which is driven to be 100+ billionaires, more powerful than states, people
If more people would just be insanely greedy they would probably be billionaires too!
Many people are insanely greedy. Becoming a billionaire is exceedingly difficult. It’s not a matter of others simply not wanting it enough.
Maybe we should be identifying those types of people and preventing them from ever controlling anything?
I mean, if we ever want society to improve at all
Maybe we need to limit them a bit more, but there's an evolutionary factor or purpose or something at play. I remember a psychology lecture where they talked about it and how in hunter and gather societies most people would be content for a while when they found a good gathering area, they would hang out and gather the food and eat. But they had certain people that didn't want to stay they just wanted to move on to find the next better gathering area and would practically be forced to eat and carry enough food before they could keep searching. Those people were important too, and I feel that's the psychology of billionaires today. There is never enough they don't even actually care about the bounty it's just the idea of getting more and more.
I also remember an experiment found that something like 8% of people swerve over to purposely hit turtles on the shoulder of the road. I would be much more interested in identifying and containing those people.
I don't think most billionaires are the people seeking new berry patches. At best they once found a great berry patch, now they mostly are paying other people to find berries for them
All I'm saying is that if there aren't enough berries to go around, maybe we should be taking a long look at the people hoarding enough berries to feed thousands of other people
doesn't sound like freedom to me
If you want absolute freedom for people to exploit society for their personal gain, then I want absolute freedom to use a brick to cave in the skulls of anyone who behaves that way
The fact is that any decent society has restrictions on absolute freedom for good reasons
they probably regret not making it higher, they're making mountains of money
It's an ungodly corrupting amount of money.
The market owner sets the rates. If you are not happy, good luck creating your own market with your huge user base.
Does this take into account that many "smartphone games" are playable via multiple platforms, and would need a non-in-app payment process anyway?
I wonder how much does the AppStore and in-app transaction infrastructure actually cost? Is 30% a fair charge or a rob?
I don't know why countries around the world aren't concerned with 30% fees to apple and google playstore.
They are. The US government smacks them with tariffs and lawsuits judged by themselves
>A Kyodo News survey found that among the top 30 best-selling game titles in 2024, at least 11 of the 16 offered by domestic companies have introduced payments through external websites.
~70% (of the top 16 Japanese Game titles, or, 11 of them)
Fuck google and fuck apple, but this isn't exactly a large sample
If we count by revenue, I am certain it will be the same.
I'm sure it is by revenue.
If you look at the data from places like https://revenue.ennead.cc/revenue you can see that there's not an even spread of revenue but instead a cluster of big winners towards the top.
Apple provides an almost-always guaranteed refund process for purchases made through the App Store, usually no questions asked.
No way do I want to trust randoms with my payment info.
Hell I just purchased a Claude.ai Pro Subscription and there's no way to remove my card info afterwards. No way to contact support (the useless chatbot send button is grayed out).
If I recall correctly the major proponents of the push for external payment systems on the App Store were companies like Match.com who own Tinder etc. and indulge in various scummy user-hostile practices (like charging certain demographics higher for the same service). Sure, break the "walled garden" and let the wolves in.