These fees are maintained not just by platforms choosing to bundle their services, but by an industry-wide desire to avoid fee-based competition, and policies that prevent competition. , developers can’t just reduce consumer-facing prices by 15% on that platform (i.e. pass the savings on to consumers) without also reducing prices by 15% on all other platforms (even if those platforms keep their 30% fees). While developers can leave these platforms, no one can skip the major platforms. Imagine if Tinder left iOS because Android offered a third of the fees?
All this would happen, with an increase in Bumble users on iOS and a possible decrease in Android-based Tinder users. Sony even made Fortnite pay its store fees if PlayStation users bought too many V-Bucks through competing panama mobile database platforms. For example, imagine a Fortnite player who spent 100 hours playing on PlayStation and 100 hours on Nintendo Switch (i.e. 5050), but only spent $40 on PlayStation and $60 on Nintendo Switch (4060). In this case, Epic Games had to pay Nintendo and Sony 25% of the "overlapping" $10. (Maybe this policy has ended).
This seems like a rant about market failure—although there’s a reason Apple is now defending monopoly charges in court, and calling on Microsoft to prove its claims that Xbox hardware is sold at a loss (which the company refuses to do). But whether or not smartphones or digital ecosystems suffer from market failure, the distribution model described above does significantly constrain the budding metaverse ecosystem.