The willful ignorance on this topic has always been absurd. Valve skims the same 30% off a game sale as apple DID... Apple switched to 15% for below 1mil revenue. If you have only free apps you can apply for the annual developer fee to be waived as well.

Valve let's you sell your game on your own website and users can add the key to their steam for 0% skim. 30% rake for what is sold through their ridiculously popular store.

Apple should just charge devs for the services like fee per download if the app is free. I believe currently the minimum paid app is $0.99, so it seems reasonable to allow $.33 apps where the dev gets none and $0 if the dev wants to front the $0.33 per user.

I guess you could argue that even $0.99 apps are subsidized but I doubt it'd be accurate. They already charge to join the dev program and it's not that expensive to run an app store.

Valve doesn't compare because Valve doesn't care if you buy a game from someone else, even on their own hardware platforms.