A couple of years ago, Facebook launched Instant Games on its platform. This is basically where gamers could play lightweight titles inside of Messenger with their other friends, and presumably based on its success, Facebook also decided to enable in-app purchases to help monetize the feature.Naturally Facebook took a cut of in-app purchases made through Instant Games (30%, with 70% going to developers), but now it seems that Facebook has decided to forego that cut. According to Facebook, “As part of our continued commitment to helping developer partners scale their games profitably, we are increasing your rev share for games on Android. Developers will retain the full amount of Android IAP revenue after deductions from Google, and this is effective starting August 1st.”
As Facebook points out, this foregoing of the 30% cut is only applicable if in-app purchases are made through the Android version of Instant Games. Purchases made on the web version will continue with the same 30-70 earnings ratio. On Android not only do developers need to split the cut with Facebook, but another 30% needs to go to Google as well.
This move might not necessarily be completely altruistic. Presumably Facebook might see a problem where if developers need to start forking out too much money in cuts, they might decide to drop one platform in favor of another, so at least this way Facebook still remains part of the story.
Cuts taken by app stores are definitely taking a toll on developers, especially those who are seeing huge success. A good example in recent times is Epic who decided that they will be skipping Google Play for Fortnite’s launch, where the game which is reported to be making $2 million a day on iOS will see all proceeds kept by Epic.