Google says it has paid over $80 billion to Play Store developers

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Google said it has paid more than $80 billion to developers for Play Store apps since the app store was launched in 2012.

Google’s Play Store is the largest app store in the world. The store, however, is mostly known for free applications. App developers usually look at Apple’s App Store for paid apps and monetise their services. Apple in 2018 revealed its App Store had 500 million weekly visitors and hit $100 billion milestone. According to The Verge, Apple has paid $155 billion to iOS developers so far.

Google’s latest report comes at a time when app developers are demanding Google and Apple to reduce their cuts from all developer sales. A high tax on app sales, up to 30%, has led some of the top developers to bypass app stores for their new products.

One of the most famous examples is Fortnite which announced it will distribute the viral game on Android directly rather Play Store. Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney revealed Google had turned down requests to circumvent the 30% revenue cut.

“We have asked that Google not enforce its publicly stated expectation that products distributed through Google Play use Google’s payment service for in-app purchase. We believe this form of tying a mandatory payment service with a 30% fee is illegal in this case of a distribution platform with over 50% market share. We note that Google Play’s Developer Distribution Agreement does not require developers use Google payments. It merely references a number of non-contractual documents asking developers to do so,” Sweeney said in December last year.