Google Play Will Let Developers Use Alternative Billing Systems in South Korea, While Apple Has Yet to Make Changes

[dwaite]

No, Apple recently changed their rules to make it clear communication with users was OK. Something that they could never actually control, they just made it tactilely acceptable. They've also never prohibited third party processing outside of the store because that would be weird.

You still can't even mention third party processing in the app, which seems to be the intention of this law

They absolutely could control it - they could remove your app from the store if you broke your contract with them.

The difference is some regulatory bodies are now saying that term of the contract is not legal.

 

[dwaite]

If VALVE can allow their publishers to create steam keys and sell them anywhere and pay valve 0%, I think apple can do it as well

Valve does have terms for that, and will revoke keys and the ability to generate keys if you abuse the system. This is actually worse because the revocation isn't really part of a mutual contract - those selling outside the store with steam keys are doing it purely on the grace of Valve.

When you look at the list of Valve "asks" (e.g. possible reasons your ability to issue steam keys would be revoked) it is very similar to any other store. Abuses include regularly putting a game on sale outside steam without offering equivalent sales to steam customers, offering customers lower support or features if they got the game from steam, etc.

 

[bousozoku]

And who are you, or the government, to determine what % is fair? I could say that I randomly think that the cut should be 9.99% that would be fair, or maybe even as low as 3.14% why not?

The market has already decided that 30%/15% is fair as that is what has been supported. If it wasn't fair then no one would be selling apps on Google Play or the App Store.

I'm not sure that 30% is fair but it is sufficient and satisfactory for many because they're still making big money or they would have abandoned the platform, as they did with mobile versions of Windows.