[a13o]

The social casino space on mobile is interesting, because everyone basically accepts that their apps are a commodity. Therefore the winners are the ones with the best operations.

SciPlay in particular comes to mind because they have built out their own payment processing on platforms that support it. They explicitly want to avoid headwinds from Walled Gardens making decrees. They would already have momentum if/when mobile platforms allow third-party transactions.

That's not to say they would also abandon the distribution benefits the mobile storefronts offer over PWAs. But payment processing wouldn't be the sole thing that keeps them. This is why Apple fights so vigorously to defend their wall. The benefit isn't innate for players or for developers. Once developers reach a certain level of maturity, the wall benefits Apple at everyone else's expense.

With the recent cracks in the wall caused by Epic, I would expect social casino space to be an early adopter in any alternative payment flows that emerge. But honestly I would expect games in general to react quickly, since Apple is walking in Facebook's footsteps and actively detoxing their games revenue habit in favor of advertising revenue. There's more incentive than ever to build a direct relationship with your customers instead of having to proxy them through Apple.

[scarface_74]

And instead of suing Google and Apple, if the PWA experience was so good on Android, then why didn’t Epic just make FortNite a PWA?

[a13o]

Probably because Unreal Engine doesn't support HTML5 games?

They did the next best thing, which is to sideload the app that UE can build.

[scarface_74]

So no major app developer has been motivated enough to create a PWA to avoid the “Google tax” even though the experience is suppose to be so much better on Android?

[a13o]

I don't get the point you're trying to make, nor do I understand your framing.

Historically using the first-party app stores for distribution & payment processing has been more profitable than doing those things on your own. The second it isn't, people won't use app stores anymore. There's nothing intrinsically good or bad about any of these technologies. They're all a means to an end - profit.

We are headed into the next era of mobile apps. Developers who initially found the app store taxes appropriate during the smartphone boom, are now looking to renegotiate the terms as the market stabilizes. There isn't enough growth to go around anymore and make everyone's shareholders happy, so everyone in the supply chain between developer and user will go to war over what's there and what's fair.

This will slowly pick apart all the unjust contracts preventing developers from pursuing alternatives. And as these contracts fall, other distribution technologies will gain momentum. It may be other app stores installing apks and ipas onto phones, it may be PWAs. It doesn't really matter.

[scarface_74]

You still don’t get it. If you look at the vast majority of money made in the App Store - 90% of it is casino style games with in app purchases. The app stores are used by those developers because they have direct access to the users wallets. No accepting credit cards outside of the App Store is not the answer.

There are plenty of ways to fund App Store purchases that don’t involve credit cards and parents aren’t going to give their kids their credit card numbers.

The other big revenue source from mobile - doesn’t involve money going through the app stores at all. They are services surfaced through apps where users already don’t pay through the App Store - like Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft office and all of the B2B apps.

Neither Apple nor Google care about the little Indy app developer.

You keep talking about “unjust “ fees. I’m talking about developers of casino style games that make almost all of the money in the App Store - this came out in the Epic trial.

It’s not about the little guy - no one cares about the little guy - including Apple.

[a13o]

What exactly don't I get? You're replying to a thread where I highlighted just one social casino company that makes over half a billion annually, doing exactly what you claim they won't do - hedging against walled gardens by investing in infrastructure to support direct relationships with customers. This space full of very big players absolutely will diversify away from app store payment processing if they find a more profitable path elsewhere. They don't care what technology they use.

I haven't talked about unjust fees I've talked about unjust contracts, which prevent forming a direct relationship with customers, aka export your business off the app stores. Once you build the business there they don't want you taking it anywhere else. And they'll wield their influence over smartphone hardware to keep developers complacent. There was just a big antitrust case about this, and the walled garden lost. The losses will continue. The big developers with big resources will use these new pathways to extract more revenue at Apple's expense. Nobody is talking about little guys except you.

[chii]

It's a distraction to argue that just because PWA is not more common it is useless.

PWA keeps the ecosystem honest. It doesn't have to be the premier platform of choice, but it needs to be a choice available.