[adamwk]

I guess this is a side-effect where, as things stood, developers were incentivized to just forgo IAP and force users to jump through hoops to find how to give them money; and that in turn wasn’t customer friendly. But in general I much prefer IAP to whatever payment system the developer uses. It makes it so easy to do things like change or cancel any payments I have.

In general I think centralized stores are customer friendly but anti developer. As a less controversial example, see how many gamers will wait months or years for a game to leave the Epic game store and go on Steam.

[sagarm]

Centralized stores are only superficially consumer friendly. The store owner is too well positioned to rent seek, and they will inevitably do so -- as Apple in fact is.

[pjc50]

Steam doesn't impose anti-competitive measures on games, though.