The walled gardens don't give a shit about the "honest indies", they make 30% off of the micro transactions while doing nothing. Billions in effortless money.

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strogonoff 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> The walled gardens don't give a shit about the "honest indies", they make 30% off of the micro transactions while doing nothing. Billions in effortless money.

Do you give a shit about honest indie devs? Putting them in quotes says you probably don’t.

If you did, perhaps you’d find that this is an obvious path to a better state of affairs that to walled garden operators is zero cost (or even profitable), financially and reputationally, while making it more economically viable to make good games that don’t use dark patterns to keep your kid glued to the screen and regularly asking for money to exchange for some in-game coins and lootboxes.

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ohdeargodno 2 days ago | parent [-]

Ah yes, putting words inbetween quotes to, uh, quote someone is a very novel usage of quotes. As an aside, being indie isn't a guarantee for honestly: I have seen come incredibly scummy behavior from indies.

> zero cost (or even profitable)

Having to handle _more_ developers isn't zero cost, but let's assume they actually sell games and indeed, make profit. That would be great! I would love a mobile ecosystem where there is a variety of things, where my phone is an actual viable platform for more than just browsing online and shitposting on HN.

>financially

You fundamentally misunderstand just how much money gachas generate every year. You could release a dozen Hollow Knights, a dozen Balatros, a dozen Stardew Valleys every year, and you'd still make less money than taking 30% off of a _single_ gacha. Genshin Impact grossed $10 billion last year. WuWa, ZZZ, HSR all gross close to half a billion each, each year. Pokemon TCG is on track for 1.5bil. And that's just gachas: games like Call of Duty Mobile and other just print out money.

There are no universes, neither in Apple or Google's imagination (which is very locked in on how much money they're making right now, as opposed to how much they could) or in anyone reasonable's thoughts where indie games take off so much they overtake any amount of profit they're currently making. There's no catching up to the amount of content a team like Genshin's puts out every three months.

> reputationally

If you think Apple gives a single shit about reputation when they're the only dealer in town, I have news for you. If you think Google gives a single shit about reputation when 90% of traffic goes through their store anyways, I have news for you.

	▲	strogonoff 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> putting words inbetween quotes to, uh, quote someone is a very novel usage of quotes Where exactly have I written “honest indies”? > You fundamentally misunderstand Sorry no, you fundamentally misunderstand the point. Try to do the math. Those microtransactions generate loads of revenue; taxing them higher will generate more revenue for the walled garden. The revenue that can then be used to subsidise a drastic reduction of the tax for the rest. > If you think Apple gives a single shit about reputation when they're the only dealer in town You are casually sneaking in falsehoods, so I’m not sure reading the rest was even worhtwhile. Not only is Apple not the only dealer in town, it is not even the largest one.

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charcircuit 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>while doing nothing

Designing entire hardware, software, and backend platforms and investing billions of dollars into them every year is not nothing. If what these companies built took no work, try making your own platform to release games on and see how little work it truly needs.

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strogonoff 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Indeed—try to make a platform where a solo developer can create an app that is then distributed to almost the entire planet, where anyone can find, buy and install it (with a nearly 100% guarantee that it will work) with a click, and get paid for it without having to open branches in every jurisdiction and deliver paperwork for N different, constantly changing tax regimes.

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overfeed 2 days ago | parent [-]

Are you describing the web? PayPal or Stripe can comfortably handle payments

	▲	strogonoff 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		If you revisit my comment, you may find what I am describing is certainly not a payment system.

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ohdeargodno 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Designing entire hardware

Designing the hardware does not entitle you to extracting more money from anything. If you don't want to lose money on your hardware, don't sell it at a loss. (Which Apple isn't doing, nor are any of the Android device manufacturers.) I haven't seen Dyson try to extract 30% off of every hairdressing salon that uses their dryers.

> software, and backend platforms

Are made to attract users on the platform. With the intention of making money from it after. Cool. Quick question, do you pay for Chrome, or Firefox ? They invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year into it, how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ?

> investing billions of dollars into them every year is not nothing

The billions have been invested initially. The ongoing costs of running the App Store / Play Store are not even close to a billion, especially not for Google that already owns all the network infrastructure necessary to run it.

>If what these companies built took no work, try making your own platform to release games on and see how little work it truly needs.

Sure, that's very simple: take any open publishing store on Android, and ask yourself why noone uses them for games delivery. I'll even add a hint: it's not because they don't offer diff based assets upgrades.

	▲	strogonoff 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Do you have proof that hardware is sold at a loss? Do you keep in mind that the software that comes with that hardware—the OS and all the batteries it comes with—comes free of charge, including years upon years of not just security patches and bugfixes but major updates with absolutely new functionality? The ongoing costs of maintaining and developing the platform and keeping the OS secure quite can not possibly be trivial. > With the intention of making money from it after. What else do you expect—the goodness of their heart alone? That would be the shortest lived business ever. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to base a business off creating positive value for people; but it’ll create vanishingly little value unless you also make sure this business is profitable—that allows to create more positive value for people over time and incentivises the ongoing improvement. > Quick question, do you pay for Chrome, or Firefox ? They invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year into it, how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ? No, but I hope both of us know how both of them are financed—by Google’s ad revenue, primarily. I would prefer the software I use in general, and operating system in particular, to not be financed primarily through ad revenue.
	▲	charcircuit 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>Designing the hardware does not entitle you to extracting more money from anything. But they can work together with 3p to expand the capabilities of the device and incentivize it with revenue sharing agreements. >how dare you not pay them 30% of every purchase you make online ? It's somewhat strange but payments have been taken up by other vendors like stripe. If payments were built into the browser it would make commerce easier and would allow them to take a percentage. >and ask yourself why noone uses them for games delivery Because being able to distribute to a store billions of people already visit is valuable.