With the conclusion and approval of the European Union’s negotiations on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Google made some changes to comply with these laws. Now developers are free to use payment systems other than Google Play. In addition, in terms of competition, the cutoff made on payments received through Google is reduced from 15% to 12% for non-game application developers.
Negotiations on DMA since December 15, 2020, have been approved in the past weeks. These laws greatly interested many providers, especially Apple and Google. It wasn’t possible to uninstall applications already installed on mobile devices wasn’t possible. With the DMA, which will come into effect next year, people can delete these stores freely.
Developers will not be forced to receive payments through app stores by the DMA clauses. With the DMA, developers will have more rights over their applications. Acting on the conclusion of this issue, which has been discussed for a long time, Google’s reduction of cut rates shows that the competition in this area will heat up.
For now, there has been no sound from the Apple front, but it is thought that a similar change may come soon. Estelle Werth, Google’s director of EU government affairs and public policy, quoted Reuters in a blog post:
“As part of our efforts to comply with these new rules, we are announcing a new programme to support billing alternatives for EEA (European Economic Area ) users. This will mean developers of non-gaming apps can offer their users in the EEA an alternative to Google Play’s billing system when they are paying for digital content and services.
Since 99% of developers currently qualify for a service fee of 15% or less, those developers would pay a service fee of 12% or lower based on transactions through alternative billing for EEA users acquired through the Play platform.”
There is a fund for game developers
As a result of a lawsuit that took place three weeks ago, Google allocated $90 million to all US-based app developers who earned less than $2 million. This funding, which was allocated as a result of the lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court, will cover the dates 2016 and 2021. Although the lawsuit results in a settlement valid only in the US region, through legal means, developers will be able to claim rights from other regions as well.
Google, which had a lot of headaches with investigations and lawsuits, was also subjected to research by the UK CMA. Although the outcome of this investigation is still unclear, it must be concluded within 18 months from the date it started. Thanks to such lawsuits, it is expected that the mobile industry will change a lot in the coming years.
