Google has made an important concession in the rules of the Play Store, its mobile application store, to comply in advance with the new European regulation on digital markets.
These changes, presented on Tuesday, July 19 in a company press release, are effective only in the European Economic Area. They now allow app developers to offer their own payment system, and no longer automatically the Google Play Store.
The Digital Markets Regulation (DMA), approved in early July by the European Parliament and which will come into force in 2023, plans to curb the anti-competitive practices of digital giants.
Among the new rules, they will no longer be able to promote their own services or impose the use of their technologies on users of their platforms. The economic model of Google and Apple, leaders in mobile operating systems, is based in particular on the deduction of commissions during any purchase made through them.
unaffected games
Google, however, indicates that it will continue to charge a fee for transactions made within third-party applications, in order to “support investments in Android and (Google) Play”.
Your rate will be reduced by 3 points, so it will go from 30% to 27% for applications that generate more than one million dollars of annual revenue, and from 15% to 12% for smaller developers, who represent the 99% of those present on the platform.
Initially, the change does not affect video game applications, but the latter, the most profitable, will be affected “before the entry into force of the DMA”, Google specifies however.
alternative systems
Apple and Google have been engaged in a months-long battle to justify the fees they charge developers around the world. At this point, they are targeted in particular by Epic Games (Fortnite’s parent company) and Match Group (Tinder’s owner).
The Dutch competition authority forced Apple earlier this year to allow alternative payment systems on dating apps in the country.
In November 2021, a US federal judge also ordered the iPhone maker to allow an alternative payment system within the App Store, but also ruled that Epic had failed to prove that Apple broke competition law.
Source: BFM TV
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