From July 1st 2021, Google will lower its Play Store commission fee to 15 percent on the first $1 million developers earn from its marketplace every year. Google claims the change will reduce the fees it takes from 99 percent of Android developers by 50 percent.
Sameer Samat, VP, Product Management said:
While these investments are most critical when developers are in the earlier stages of growth, scaling an app doesn’t stop once a partner has reached $1M in revenue — we’ve heard from our partners making $2M, $5M and even $10M a year that their services are still on a path to self-sustaining orbit.
This is why we are making this reduced fee on the first $1M of total revenue earned each year available to every Play developer, regardless of size.
We believe this is a fair approach that aligns with Google’s broader mission to help all developers succeed. We look forward to sharing full details in the coming months.
Developers don’t need to apply to a program to take advantage of Google’s reductions. In addition the company is making the fee reduction on the first million available to all developers, even those that easily make more than that in a single year.
While the changes from the Google Play store will help a substantial number of smaller app makers, the companies that make the most from the store will still pay close to 30% of digital sales.
That was the point made by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on Tuesday in response to Google’s news. Epic Games is currently suing Apple and Google, seeking to make changes to their app stores to allow for third-party payment processors as well as other changes.
“It’s a self-serving gambit: the far majority of developers will get this new 15% rate and thus be less inclined to fight, but the far majority of *revenue* is in apps with the 30% rate,” Sweeney tweeted.
