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Comment by danShumway | Hacker News Reader

Further evidence that developer pressure and legal pressure on smartphone platforms work, that they aren't a waste of time.

Prolonged campaigns for better terms can make a tangible difference, and we should be encouraged by this result to advocate for even better terms. It turns out that when they have real pressure, it is possible for Google and Apple to come up with better terms.

Keep in mind that the reason Google is being sued for antitrust isn't because it was taking 30% -- it's because it forced manufactures not to install or bundle any 3rd party stores by threatening to remove access to the Play store if any competing storefronts were enabled by default on consumer devices. So this doesn't change the original complaint, but it's still a very big win for smaller developers.

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> Further evidence that developer pressure and legal pressure on smartphone platforms work, that they aren't a waste of time.

Sure, if you're Epic. For the rest of us minnows, we just have to play the hand we're dealt.

This change directly impacts minnows, it's a revenue cut for companies making less than a million dollars, not more.

And if your point is that it took a company as large as Epic raising a fuss to get that change, well... why should I care? It's still a change that will help smaller developers.

Honestly, I don't get HN's position on this. When Epic sued, people complained that Epic was too big and progress would only be made if an ideologically pure company pushed for it. When conversation started talking about regulation, I heard people complain that it wasn't going to go anywhere and that regulators didn't care. Then when other companies like Hey and Microsoft started joining in making statements against current app store terms, people complained there weren't going to be any changes, that this was just a farce that would result in at best a backroom deal with Epic and/or Microsoft that wouldn't affect smaller devs.

Now there's a tangible policy change that will have a huge impact on smaller devs, and the complaint is that the wrong company had a role in it? What do you want?

I'm not saying we don't benefit from it, or complaining about Epic's involvement. I'm just observing that this result came about solely because the interests of a behemoth (in Epic) happened to briefly coincide with ours. It's not like it was the result of a successful grass-roots campaign.

The App/Play Stores are borderline anti-competitive due to the huge imbalance of power. A 30%->15% reduction doesn't change that. So while it's nice, the fundamental problem hasn't been solved.

What do I want? Pretty simple. I don't want to run my business at the whims of two unaccountable monopolies, and I want the option of extricating myself from their ecosystem. Specifically, this means:

- My choice of store/payment processor on both iOS and Google devices

- a clear, impartial and independent review process that determines whether or not an app's removal from the "official" stores was legitimate.

Ideally I'd also like direct installation ("sideloading") to be as simple as desktop software, but that's probably a bit of a reach.

HN is not a hivemind, those were all different people with opposing views.

> This change directly impacts minnows, it's a revenue cut for companies making less than a million dollars, not more.

Do note that while the Apple policy won’t benefit Epic, the Google one will.

Apple swaps from 15 to 30% cut when you reach 1 million. Google gets 15% from the first 1 million, then taxes the rest at 30.

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