Google is cutting Play Store fees
Google said in a blog post on Tuesday that it is cutting the service fee it charges when a developer sells digital products or services via Google Play Store. The fee will be reduced to 15% for the first $1 million of revenue the developers earn each year. Google follows its rival Apple, which made a similar move in November 2020, by cutting the 30% commission on digital goods sold on the App store to 15% for $1 million earned in 1 year.
“The change will start from July 1, and it’ll apply to all developers regardless of how much they are generating. Once developers make more than $1M revenue in sales for a year, the fee will jump to standard 30%,” said Google.
According to Google’s vice president of product management, Sameer Samat, 99% of the developers that sell digital products or services with the Google Play store will see a 50% reduction in fees with this change.
Sameer Samat wrote in a blog post that “this cost reduction is a fund that can assist developers in augmenting at a censorious stage of their growth by recruiting marketing staff, hiring more engineers, expanding server capacity, and more.”
This latest move comes after several companies filed complaints against Google and Apple because their app store fee is too high. These complaints reached an all-time high last summer due to the actions of Fortnite-developer Epic Games. The reduction in play store fee due to the Epic Game complaints suggest that they have shoved these tech giants to finally make some amendments before they’re forced to.
Shortly after the news was announced, an Epic Games’ spokesperson appreciated that the reduction in fee might ease a small portion of the financial burden, but the change doesn’t address the root cause of the issue.
A spokesperson for Epic Games wrote, “Whether it’s 15% or 30%, developers are forced to use Google’s in-app payment services for apps obtained through Google Play Store” and added “Android needs to be fully open to competition, with genuinely level playing field among platform companies, service providers, and app creators. Competition in payment processing and app distribution is the only path to a fair app marketplace.”
