Tim Sweeney Talks Unfairness Behind App Stores

CEO of Epic Games is not happy about app stores which are “pretty unfair at the moment.”

CEO of Epic Games is not happy about app stores. Tim Sweeney declared the iOS App Store’s high charge “a parasitic loss”, stating that developers are losing too much money from the cut of app revenues taken by the marketplaces. 

Sweeney took time at Devcom this Tuesday to talk about the business models of mobile gaming. Sweeney thinks that the current system in operation by the iOS App Store, Google Play, and others is “pretty unfair at the moment.”

These app stores take 30 percent of your revenue for distribution. That’s strange because Mastercard, Visa, and other companies that handle transactions take 2 percent or three percent of the revenue.”

Tim Sweeney 

Yes, the stores deal with content delivery and customer service, but it is still difficult to believe these extra costs have to take more than 5 percent to 6 percent of revenue for their operation. “So they’re pocketing a huge amount of profit from your order – and they aren’t really doing much to help us anymore.” 

Sweeney also pointed out that the current mobile game charts are dominated by “a few games with $100 million marketing budgets,” making it unreal for smaller studios to survive. These small teams have to spend money on social networks and advertising, valued at around $3 per installation for a free-to-play game by Sweeney. 

This is a market failure. Gamers really want to find great new games, developers want to reach gamers, and there’s a lot of opportunity for discovery that isn’t really working out in an effective way.

Tim Sweeney

Sweeney thinks that developers should be angry about this and that they should “constantly be on the lookout for other solutions, and new ways to reach gamers.” 

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Comments 6

  • Anonymous

    The Unreal Marketplace vets all submissions so its not a fair comparison. Obviously it's gonna cost more if Marketplace QA involves looking through your entire source code and App Store QA just involves seeing if your program clears a virus scan.

    Not saying 30% is a fair Marketplace cut though. Less and you'd have more developers making assets which means more games.

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    Anonymous

    ·6 years ago·
  • SE_JonF

    Maybe there should be a mention in the article that Mr. Sweeney's own marketplace charges 30% from developers all while being plagued with many issues? It's always been a head scratcher for marketplace sellers given games made with UE4 have 5% cut if you exceed $3000 in revenue per quarter - but we get taken to the cleaners on royalties.

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    SE_JonF

    ·6 years ago·
  • Anonymous user

    @MacKenzie Shirk maybe they'll change this in the nearest future.

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    Anonymous user

    ·6 years ago·
  • MacKenzie Shirk

    Could this be anymore hypocritical? The UE4 Marketplace takes a 30% revenue cut from the developers...

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    MacKenzie Shirk

    ·6 years ago·
  • Anonymous user

    1

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    Anonymous user

    ·6 years ago·
  • Hello Bard

    Couldn't agree more with this, the App Stores are shooting themselves in the foot with this tactic as well. There's been very little innovation in the app games market because of the absolute dominance of certain games/genres. It's nearly impossible to survive for the smaller devs.

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    Hello Bard

    ·6 years ago·

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