Game makers says Amazon’s Android appstore terms are greedy | Hacker News Reader

Game makers says Amazon’s Android appstore terms are greedy

venturebeat.com

41 pointsshawndumas10 comments

It would be interesting if app stores worked like retail stores. Developers sell apps to the store at their desired price, and the app store sells it to a customer, usually with an added markup of 30%. If Amazon wants to sell a popular app as a loss leader Walmart style, they are free to do that without screwing the developer.

That would leave app makers susceptible to a major player with large amounts of capital that can sell at a loss until all other players are driven from the market and then raise its prices once it has gained pricing power.

Book publishers appear to have wizened to Amazon's game here and have refused to allow Amazon to use discounts to drive other sellers out of business. Many publishers have moved to an agency model where Amazon takes 30% and the publishers set the retail price of the books.

Something I'm missing here:

Amazon will either pay the developer 70% of the actual purchase price (which is set by Amazon) or 20% of the listed price (set by the developer), whichever is higher.

So what's to stop a developer from listing the game at $100 and letting Amazon figure out for itself, what a more sensible price should be (and then collecting $20 which would be higher than 0.7*whatever_price_amazon_finally_sets)?

Will Amazon reject apps on the basis of the listed price?

I believe that is allowed, but:

- You can't sell it anywhere else. Amazon requires that you give them the best pricing on the app, ever. Per the article, if you even list it for a day on sale for $0.99, you have to price it in Amazon for that amount forever.

- Pricing is at amazon's discretion. So they'll price it at $28.57, you'll get $20 when your mom buys it, and nobody else will.

- The big win is if you get offered for free, since then a ton of people download you and you still get 20% of your purchase price. That will never happen to you, since the "who gets featured" algorithm appears to be people-making-decisions based.

Side note: this model is excruciatingly bad for apps that have per-user costs to the developer. If, for example, you plan for the average $0.99 user to use $0.25 of server storage and CPU, and amazon decides to give your app away, you may wind up in the hole.

Amazon requires "developers to guarantee Amazon a minimum list price that matches the lowest price on any other market". So you would have to price your app out of others markets to employ this strategy on the Amazon market.

Build your own App store?

Given how well the Humble indie Bundles have done in the past (and how the current one is doing), I think their concerns over pricing are a bit overblown.

you're going to have to spell this thought out for me. i don't see how some middleman taking 80% is redeemed by the success of "humble indie bundles".

What middleman is taking 80%?

One of the reason the humble bundles do so well is that people have the option of paying more than the asking price (of free). There is no option to pay more than the $0.38 (number pulled out of my ass) amazon charges because of a promotion. Comparing the humble bundles with an app store makes no sense.

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