Is The Mobile Gaming Marketplace Changing?

Mobile gaming is now the fastest growing and largest gaming market in the world, with a shifting demographic away from just teen males and now branching out further, the most popular genres are also shifting. Whilst marketplaces for games across mobile are still evolving, they have gone relatively unchanged for quite some time as adjustment is slow, but big changes may be on the way.

Late last year, a conflict had emerged between gaming giant Epic Games, the developer behind the popular battle royale game Fortnite, and the two tech giants in Apple and Google – the conflict came as Epic Games made an adjustment to their payment method to enable direct payments, forgoing the marketplace tax of 30% that is adjusted for in-app purchases, this promptly led to the game being removed from both marketplaces as it broke the terms of service for developers, and the legal battle quickly followed – not only to get the game reinstated, but to also have major changes made to better support developers, something that is now known as “Project Liberty” internally at Epic.

Some small changes have already been made – Apple have committed to lowering the in-app purchase tax down to 15% for small business who fall under a certain earning threshold, which is certainly a start, but has still been criticized as some as not enough. The legal battle around this will be drawn out for a longer period of time, however, so it certainly won’t be the last change that we’ll see but it does bring up the question around what major changes could come off the back of this.

The benefits of these changes could reach are certainly looking big for different genres however – the most notable has been within the growing gambling industry on mobile as the biggest operators are finding great success on mobile. Although there is some regulation to hold these games away from the marketplaces, one of the big heels has been within the huge tax required as it cuts directly into the bottom line and 30% for every user is a huge amount, many players have since turned to direct sites for betting and gambling on betting24 se amongst others, but some are still sceptical to rely on these services knowing that change could come at any moment – but the mobile platform is  certainly looking to be the way for many to go.

Ultimately, time will tell – little change will come quickly, or immediately as finer details are still figured out, and with the legal battle looming over neither Epic nor Apple or Google will be looking to make anything drastic that could show their hand, and given it still remains unclear which side legislation may protect more, and which may have their hand forced. It’s an exciting time for mobile gaming as a whole however, as the marketplaces could be on the path to big, and more permanent change that could shape the future for mobile gaming.