What do Apple and Google’s direct-to-consumer changes really mean for game developers?
The direct-to-consumer payment landscape for mobile game developers is changing. Rapidly. Courts and regulators in both the EU and the US have taken issue with Google and Apple's app store monopolies, which means in the near future, mobile game developers may no longer have to mandatorily surrender a 30% cut on all in-game purchases.
Traditionally, selling in-game items or virtual currency through an external webshop has generally been allowed without additional fees by Apple and Google, so long as you don’t embed payments directly inside your mobile game, or steer players with calls-to-action inside the game to buy items from an external webshop.
Recent regulatory and legal pressure has forced Apple and Google to make concessions on embedded payments. However, these concessions have come with prohibitively high fees that negate most of the financial value of direct-to-consumer. This has spurred lawsuits from app and game publishers like Epic, Spotify, and others, which will further increase pressure. Other game publishers are still in wait-and-see mode as these lawsuits play out.
That said, direct-to-consumer is still a viable growth strategy for mobile game publishers, and there are many excellent examples of success to learn from including Warner Bros' Game of Thrones Conquest, Scopely’s Marvel Strikeforce, and the Supercell store.
How can developers monetise their mobile games with direct-to-consumer today? Well, that's a little more complicated. The freedom of monetizing with direct-to-consumer comes with the complexities of global payment methods, currency localisation, and local sales tax/VAT compliance, all of which need to be scrupulously observed to ensure you don't fall foul of the law. This is where the convenience of a direct-to-consumer payments specialist like FastSpring comes in, saving you not only time but considerable money, too. While it focuses on your payments (and, importantly, fraud prevention), you can stay focused on making great games.
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