30% is "a market fee, not a monopoly fee," says Google | Epic vs Google
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The Epic vs Google trial has begun, with both sides making their opening statements on Monday, and Google quick to defend its 30% cut of all transactions for apps distributed via its Play store.
According to The Verge, Google attorney Glenn Pomerantz described the 30% share as "a market fee, not a monopoly fee."
"The service fee you see here is exactly the same fee that Epic pays in the Nintendo store, the Xbox store, the Steam store," he said in a San Francisco court yesterday. "All these stores charge a mega developer like Epic the same 30% fee."
Pomerantz also argued that Google Play and the Android ecosystem provide developers with more value than payment processing services like PayPal or Stripe.
Later in the day, head of the Epic Games Store Steve Allison – the trial's first witness – disputed that 30% is the standard.
He told the court that Valve chose a 30% fee for Steam simply because that was what was charged at physical retail when the marketplace launched.
To emphasise the possibility of other revenue shares, he noted that he himself helped Telltale Games build its own digital store that operated with a 95/5 revenue share. He also claimed to be the person that suggested Epic let developers keep 80% or more of their revenue when the EGS launched.
Allison added that Epic's introduction of the 88/12 split prompted Steam, the Windows Store, and Discord all to revise their revenue shares.
In the wake of the EGS launch, Valve introduced revenue tiers, with developers only paying 25% after their game made $10 million in revenue, and 20% if their game made $50 million. Discord, meanwhile, cut its share to 10% and Microsoft later
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