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Google has finally lowered the developer transaction fees for Google Play subscriptions, a change which it said last year that it would be making as of January 1st 2018. Now that it’s January 3rd Google has lowered the fees for developers from 30 percent to 15 percent, meaning that developers now get 85 percent of the revenues from subscriptions instead of the previous 70 percent that they were getting. The revenues are only for users which are subscribed to an app or game for at least 12 months, but even with that time frame required a 15 percent increase in the revenue is likely to be a big jump, especially for those which have a high number of users which are still subscribed following the 12 months.
Google’s change for the fee will continue to stay in place for each specific subscriber as long as developers retain those subscribers after the 12-month time frame, and for any users which have been paying for the subscription for an app or game for less than a year developers will end up getting 85 percent of that revenue once they go beyond 12 paid months, so there is now even more incentive for developers to make the best apps that they can, and improve on ones they already offer to users.
It’s also important for developers to keep in mind what would count towards a user’s 12 paid months of subscription fees, now more than ever since they will be getting more revenue from those fees as of today. These changes that Google put in place were part of an announcement that Google made alongside changes for the Google Play Store, back on October 19th, such as a reworked Editor’s Choice section and reminders for users to check out recently installed apps or games that they haven’t spent much time using. More to the point, Google’s changes for the subscription fee revenues following 12 months of paid subscriptions showcases that Google wants to make sure that developers are making more money for the platform, which is a good thing for developers as it means more developers will want to create content for the Google Play platform, and that’s a good thing for users because it means more potential high-quality content.