[kcplate]

> I am not saying it has a value, but 30% seems a lot.

I’d suggest that it’s cheap, at least historically compared to just about any other product that’s been sold. If I had a popular marketplace platform that basically sold my product without much need for human intervention on the transaction, that has real value. Honestly 30% seems like a bargain to me.

In marketing and sales of the product, any human that touches the process ultimately is getting a piece of that transaction. We may not have physical media, but that was actually probably the least of the expense associated with software products back in the day. Consider the army of people needed just to wholesale to retail, coordinate distribution, distribute…

My recollection from those days is that if the dev got 10% royalties of a purchase price they would have been ecstatic. If you offered them 70%? They probably would have thought “what’s the catch?”