🚨 EMERGENCY EPISODE🚨 Game over, Apple? What you need to know & do NOW!

this new ruling on iOS in the United States, I think it won't be that difficult to get above 50% for any game.

Like, I think any game, if they have the proper promotion, messaging, store, and value in place, can shift to those players from mobile to web.

They'll have that in their store.

They'll talk about that value with their players and they'll get them directly in there and have them logged in in a pretty frictionless experience.

And so, why wouldn't we be able to shift the revenue profile and the profit profile that

Mate, you aim as your eyes on the prize.

Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.

Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackups crafting realms lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey stick, got your back.

Ads are beautiful, they like the way.

Click it fast, don't delay.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

That's definitely happening.

Maybe at the very beginning.

Hello, everybody.

This is an emergency episode.

My name is Matia Lanceric.

I'm Felix Braunberg.

And I'm Merco Bemier.

And we

are your hosts.

Okay.

We haven't timed it yet.

Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

Well, well, and we have our very special guest, Chip, from Fast Spring.

Welcome, Chip, to the podcast.

Thanks, Matei.

Happy to be here.

Great.

So can you give us a little bit of intro about you, company, and then, I mean, that's going to be very interesting in like intro into the topic that we're talking about today because it's all all over the news, but nobody's talking about it, really.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So, I'm Chip Thurston.

I'm the head of gaming here at Fastspring.

So, Fastspring is a merchant of record.

We power web stores for gaming developers and really beyond gaming as well.

We have 20 years of experience here, over 3,000 customers globally, and work with some of the biggest names in gaming.

And so, my role here is to help our customers market and monetize direct-to-consumer, and really to stay on top of all the evolving landscape of direct-to-consumer.

Also, briefly, before Fastspring, I was at Scopely.

I actually just left Scopely back in October, where I was in some product and marketing leadership roles there.

Also, largely involved in direct-to-consumer.

So, a lot.

I've lived in this world for the last few years.

Yeah, Jakub's eyes almost fell off his head, like, oh, Scopely.

Wow, yeah, I know, I knew that.

I'm just thinking, like, Monopoly Go Tycoon Club, the direct-to-consumer thing.

Yeah.

Yeah,

that's a, that's, that's a whirlwind.

That, that, that tycoon club is really exciting.

Nice.

Okay, so we're talking about

Apple's court loss and how that's a win for mobile game developers.

But before that, we actually, there's an interesting thing happening in LA.

We're doing with chip and the whole company Keyboard Studio.

So there's going to be a yacht party, 19th of May,

7 p.m.

in the Marina Bay.

Everybody should def should come.

It's after the Games Beat conference.

And it's going to be a lot of fun.

Oh my God.

Link into the video.

I saw there was lasers as well.

It was a laser yacht party, right?

Of course.

What is that?

I mean, the only thing better than a yacht party is a laser yacht party.

I mean, yes, obviously, but yeah, okay.

Well,

don't worry.

I will post

a lot of photos and videos from that.

Yeah, if you find this conversation interesting from today, definitely come to the yacht party in LA because that's where you can meet people from FastSpring.

You can talk more about this court ruling that we're going to talk about today.

What actually happened?

Yeah,

I have to be honest with the Yacht Party, Mate.

It's really just an elaborate excuse to get to hang out with you.

I think

after being turned away from your GDC party, I

had to get things in motion to try to get the opportunity.

That's true.

That's true.

That's true.

Okay, so what happened?

What happened with Apple?

Chip walk us through

everything and we are going to ask questions because we have a lot of them.

And yeah, let's start.

Let's start with the ruling.

Yeah, yeah.

So, very specifically, we'll be talking about this ruling that came through on April 30th, 2025.

And it's in the United States applying to Apple in the course of Epic Games versus Apple.

But I think before we get there, it's important to start with some context on why this ruling is so significant, kind of how we got here, to then talk about the impact that it has.

For the first 15 years or so of mobile gaming, the model was that Apple and Google took 30% of revenue.

That was just the fee for doing business in mobile gaming.

And we all accepted that and moved forward with that.

And then in 2021, there was a ruling that came through and said these alternative payment methods, these alternative stores, like web stores, could exist.

And so that was very significant.

That was also in Epic Games versus Apple.

And so after that, we started seeing these web stores pop up.

But also, in response to that, Apple and Google implemented what came to be known as these anti-steering policies.

Basically, that you, as a mobile app, as a mobile game, could not navigate players directly from that game to your web store.

You couldn't directly link into it.

You couldn't even really talk about its existence inside of your mobile game.

And if you did, that would be in violation of your agreement with Apple or Google.

And so that's been the landscape for the last four years.

And despite that, some companies are still really succeeding in the space.

You have leaders like Scoply, Playtica, who have found success in getting players to web stores in indirect means and living within these anti-steering policies and still benefiting from that because they get significantly much more gross margin

than a mobile purchase.

Yeah.

I heard a rumor that what Playtica does is if you spend over K, they send you an iPad with their web store installed.

That's how they get around it.

They have a VIP like concierge service, right?

So when you spend X amount of money, they message you.

And then if you spend spend X amount of money, they just send you an iPad because it's cheaper than just paying the 30% fee.

Wow.

Well, that's so that's I have no idea.

I can't speak to that, but I will say a story like that is indicative of like the creativity that these developers needed to have, right?

Because, like,

yeah, you couldn't link directly from

the game.

You could do all these creative ways, which, I mean, everybody can get really creative if it's if it's about money and 30%.

Come on.

What I heard, and I'm sure YouTube can't speak to this, right?

But what I'm hearing with the clients that I worked with that were doing web stores, how they were directing users to

the online stores, was two ways mainly.

It was retargeting.

So they were using DSPs like Remerge Addictive to just retarget the users for their offline payments.

And some of the savvy ones were doing a pop-up screen interstitials that they launched server-side after the game passed the review.

So basically, you show the interstitial really far in the game, but only after the review got passed, and that's when you pushed it.

Yeah, that's

the two ways.

That's the two ways that I heard were the most popular, right?

Yeah.

Interesting.

Those are sneaky ways to go about it for sure.

There are also more

genuine ways, too.

For example, linking into a news page on a website.

And then that news page doesn't have anywhere to monetize, so it's not violating the anti-steering policies.

And then once they're on that news page, oh yeah, there's this splashing store button up in the side that we're like, we're trying to navigate players.

Yeah, there you go.

So,

that's been where companies have operated, right?

And even some companies have seen that success, but it required a lot of investment to get there.

Companies like Scoplay, Platica, investing not just in ideas and in the time and effort to generate those ideas, but then actually developing a website to facilitate that beyond just a store.

And so, it did prohibit a lot of adoption from driving players to web stores.

Over that time, we've seen rulings like the DMA come through, but that hasn't really changed the landscape.

And I can talk more about that too, but what I want to get to is this ruling just this week.

So this ruling came through on April 30th, and what it said was that the anti-steering policies currently in place are anti-competitive and therefore unenforceable.

And the reason this ruling is particularly significant is because of the specificity and timing of it.

It really goes in depth on what Apple can and cannot do to

prevent steering or to not prevent steering in this case.

And it says these rules are effective immediately and there's no opportunity to stay this decision.

When the DMA came down, for example, it had a lot of similar language.

Like games need to be able to steer players from mobile to web.

Like it would be anti-competitive not to do so.

And so some compliance we saw was Apple or Google saying, okay, we'll do that.

But

as a game pops up a screen to say, hey, you're going off platform, it'll include a lot of scary language.

It'll say things like, hey,

we can't guarantee you can trust this website.

You'll be sharing your payment information there.

Like, make sure it's safe.

And ways to really add friction to the process.

And in this new ruling, they say you can't do that.

It has to be a very neutral screen that says you can use a third-party site.

The ruling also says you can directly link into your web store from a mobile game.

So you can have a button that just says web store, and you click there, you go directly into the store.

It says you can promote the store in your game.

You can say the web store exists, and we want you to go there.

And even the web store has 10% more value, 20% more value.

Like, please go over there.

And in the most extreme example, please go there, make us more money, please.

0% added value like we saw sometimes.

Yeah, yeah.

And the most extreme example is just Spotify this week came out where they removed Apple processing entirely from their payments in their app in the United States.

All their payment buttons link to a web store.

And so there's no obligation to use this.

Now, we'll see.

There's a lot of reasons to keep your guard up, which I'm sure we'll get into, but that is why this rolling is so significant right now this week.

Yeah, everybody's talking about, oh, this is a great success.

But then there's also the other side of the equation.

I mean, now you need to process the payment, you need to take care of the taxes.

I guess different different states have different taxes, like different processes.

So, I mean, it's

not people will be very easy to do these things for those 30%.

Let me just say that.

But

let's stay here.

I want to just one thing again

that I want to confirm.

So, Apple will appeal this, but appealing this doesn't mean stopping this to work.

Do I understand it right?

So, this works from first May, and Apple can appeal it and drag it on because the whole argument about this, like, yeah, this is great and everything, but Apple will throw a giant army of lawyers at this this and prolong for 30 years.

So they still can do it, but it's already in force.

Therefore, do I get the right that they can still use their army button of lawyers, but it will be whatever somewhere there in the future?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think that's why you're seeing some studios operate with such urgency right now because we don't know how long this window will stay open.

It could be open indefinitely.

Could be open.

That's my question.

Yeah, yeah.

If appeal happens, so now it's actually the time is playing against Apple, not for Apple, like you always have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Like, we dragged this on, blah, blah, blah.

So, now they need to be super fast because people are getting uses out of the platforms.

Now, they're losing money, basically.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

And so, Apple has said we'll comply, but we'll appeal.

Yes, and so I think it would be naive to say these are the rules.

This is like the landscape moving forward, right?

Like, we don't know that for sure.

We know it's the landscape today, though.

We know that Spotify submitted an app where they shifted all their payments off platform.

It got approved by Apple and it's live today.

And again, this only applies to the United States, so please bear that in mind.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

And do I get that right now?

It goes where, like the Supreme Court or like the last instance of judiciary, or where this is heading currently for the appeal?

That is beyond my legal understanding.

I don't know the next step.

Am I like just what I wanted to say with this is like, how many of these appeal hoops do we need to go under this?

Is like, this is the deal.

This is the end of sentence.

No more appeals.

Yeah.

I mean,

I think it's important for sure to understand that.

But I think the more important piece is to keep an eye on the overall regulations and Apple's overall reaction, because I think the reaction will extend far beyond this appeal.

And that the appeal is one way they will approach this, because the appeal will specifically be about these anti-steering policies and how players navigate between mobile and web.

And Apple will absolutely continue to fight this.

Of course.

Because 30% is a very valuable revenue stream for them.

Lawyers need to be paid.

Yes, obviously.

12% of Apple's revenues is from the App Store, right?

So for that.

It's huge.

And so beyond the appeal, if I try to advocate for Apple here, which I want to be clear, I'm with Batspring.

I have a bias against them here.

But if I think about Apple, they could do things to add value to payments that are...

to games that process payments through their ecosystem, right?

Like they control the ecosystem.

I will stop you there.

They hate games, period.

Well, they do, they do, but they like the revenue from games, right?

That's true, yeah.

So fair enough.

They could find ways to incentivize that for game developers.

That's not in violation of this ruling today.

They could.

One thing we saw in the EU in response to the DMA, they implemented these per install fees.

It seemed like a bit of an experiment, right?

As a way to try to monetize installs in a different way.

And so we could see them go more down that road.

We could even see them maybe look at that 30% as something they obviously haven't wanted to change because it's been such a valuable revenue stream for them.

But it's possible they lower that 30% and say, you know what, we add value to games, but maybe it's not on the scale of 30%.

So it comes down a little bit and becomes more compelling for games.

I really want to hear what value they can add on a level of 30%.

Yeah.

Credit card fee is what, like 0.8, like 1%, maybe, right?

So 30% outrageous.

Especially with the zero organic discovery.

Yeah, look,

you open the store and then you have

Supercell, Polarix, Dream Games, Monopoly Go, whatever, like all these big com big games as featured on the top of the store.

Everybody else is basically dead.

That's it.

Like there's your thirty percent.

Makes sense.

They make more most money out of these games.

Sure.

Fair enough.

That's true.

That's true.

I think there are some things we take for granted as game developer.

I feel weird depending Apple this much.

Don't worry, it's fine.

I do think there's a high degree of trust and scalability and safety and convenience of payments all of that is tied to payments and so an effective merchant of record like a fast spring will help you get a similar level of convenience and minimizing friction and have that payment coverage and confident scalability But that's something that needs to be considered as you shift your payments off platform.

You're changing your merchant of record.

Apple and Google have been the ones handling all this for you.

And so you need to make sure that you have a confident merchant of record in place so that you're equipped to be be able to shift this to reap more of those profits.

Yeah, but then how do you actually choose a merchant of record?

And how are you sure that the one you chose is the right one and the one that you trust?

That's the thing.

Yeah, I think.

It'll be different depending on different games, different criteria.

At the end of the day, I think the most important thing is just trust and confidence because you're trusting this partner with revenue, like with revenue for your game.

They are the ones handling that and then providing it to you.

And that's so that you can transact on a global basis through your own store.

And so you need to have someone you know can be there, you know, can scale with your game.

Like bear in mind, like with this ruling, games are shifting a lot more revenue to web store if they have not already.

And if you, as a game, shift your revenue to your web store through your merchant of record and all the other games they manage shift their revenue to this web store through this merchant of record, we do have capacity limits.

If all the games do that, our limits can be stretched to capacity, right?

that's why we're uh at fast rank we're definitely talking to all of our customers and like help us understand how much traffic you're bringing in so we can make sure we have the capacity in place to handle that um and we're confident we do but i say this to say like you need to think of it in terms of how your merchant is reacting to this landscape and that they have the infrastructure to be able to support like the the traffic that's coming from this rolling

do i understand is like it's going to be so big that like visa enters the game at some point or what

i don't know you sounded like oh we really need so much capacity.

Wait,

let me that question.

Bit curious here.

So I just looked up before the show, right?

So in 2024, App Store

in the United States, same time period, Google Play generated 21 billion.

So that's close to 55 billion.

What is the conversation right now in Fast Spring?

And what do you think is happening in all other payment providers right now?

Like, what's the conversation?

Yeah, in terms of the money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a huge,

it's a huge,

huge market.

It is.

And honestly, it's similar to the conversations that we have going into like Black Friday, for example.

Like Black Friday represents this extreme spike in demand in both traffic and conversion.

And it's across all sellers at the exact same time.

And so going into a holiday like that, we have to proactively communicate with our customers to say, like, all right, how much traffic do you expect?

And we're going to plan beyond that capacity because we know we're not great always at estimating that kind of thing.

And so we're taking a very similar approach right now.

Like different games might be adopting it at different times.

And also, it expands beyond games.

It's mobile apps, like I mentioned, Spotify earlier.

And so it's making sure that we have this, we're moving in lockstep with our customers to be able to support that.

I think the other part to consider is risk management.

We haven't even touched on that yet.

But as the merchant of record, we handle risk management and that encompasses like fraudulent purchases, charge bags, being able to detect that.

And we're the ones accountable for a lot of that as the merchant.

And

when it comes to scaling up like this, we need to make sure we're aware of what changes might come from our customers too.

Like, do you expect more frequent purchases?

Do you expect the different demographic of purchases to shift to your web store?

For example, the people normally shifting to web stores under the current policies have been whales, right?

It's your bigger spenders purchasing on a very regular basis.

Well, with this new ruling, if you're just dumping all of your traffic into the web store now, it's going to really augment that player profile.

And if our risk model isn't attuned to that, it could identify things that fraudulent that are not actually fraudulent.

And so that's, again, where we have to make sure we communicate with our customers and make sure that we understand what they expect so that we can expect it too.

So what's the magic number that Felix was asking for?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's the magic number?

Like, what's the

transparency?

Wait, wait, wait, no, no.

The number was like, this is the market.

And after the ruling, the expectation is this much flow will now be done through web stores.

stores so that's what we feel what felic was asking so 55 billion i guess like what would that be fees like 15 of that would be going to google and apple which no longer will go so that means yeah 10 how are you guys thinking about it yeah

i think i think about it on a game-by-game basis.

I don't think of the bigger like a percentage of revenue for Apple.

I think about it within Fast Brings Impact at Apple, right?

Within the games that we manage.

If you had asked me a week ago about how much revenue a game could drive through a web store, I would have said a best-in-class number for a mid-core game would be like 40%, 50%, somewhere in that range, right?

And that's after significant investment and months, if not years of effort.

In a casual game, it's maybe 20, 25%.

Again, different demographic, different purchase behavior, and after significant investment.

But this new ruling on iOS in the United States, I think it won't be that difficult to get above 50% for any game.

Like, I think any game, if they have the proper promotion, messaging, store, and value in place can shift to those players from mobile to web.

They'll have that in their store.

They'll talk about that value with their players and they'll get them directly in there and have them logged in in a pretty frictionless experience.

And so why wouldn't we be able to shift the revenue profile and the profit profile that significantly?

Another question in that case.

So what's the percentage of increase between

last seven days of how much money you actually process now versus what you did like a week ago.

I will take longer than that to build out, right?

Like, let's hear, let's hear.

Yeah.

It has, I mean, the honest answer is it hasn't shifted much yet because it's been four days since this ruling.

So I think customers are getting their ducks in a row, right?

And saying, let's get our interpretation of this

and let's see how quickly we can act on that because there is that urgency, but that urgency won't come at the expense of due diligence.

Like, let's not put ourselves in a precarious position just to reap a few more extra days of of profit.

So, let's make sure we understand this, that we're doing things in the right way.

And even that we're doing it like in a technically sound way, like making sure this only applies to the United States because things haven't changed in Europe.

Things haven't changed in Asia.

Like, these other regions are unchanged right now.

So, basically, that means for people that have web stores, can just advertise them much more radically, and people that didn't have web stores started building them from last week.

Well, basically, first of May.

Yeah.

But then, okay, so you said like they're getting the DAX in your Like, what does that even mean for the developers that actually like process-wise?

Yeah, I think it's saying, okay, how will we promote this in our game?

What are our means of promotion with that?

Do we have a like, what's our go-to-market plan look like, essentially?

Is there a news section that

do we actually have the infrastructure to put this in our store?

Can we put a banner in our store that says, hey, web store, can we put a side-by-side with pricing to then link out to the store?

Like, how, what are all the tools in the toolbox that I, as a game developer, have?

And then I'll put together this go-to-market plan now that I know I can communicate much more freely.

Okay.

So, another question I was thinking about, because there's already some heavy hitters that have thrown their hat in the ring.

I'm thinking about Epic, right?

They announced, what was it, two days ago, that anyone below earning it below a million will be able to process it for free through their web store, and anyone earning over a million will be processing it 12%.

In my experience, working with some large clients that that process probably close to hundreds of millions or billions that have web stores, they're not paying 12%, right?

Yeah,

I guess the big battle because there's so many gaming companies, like it's 70-30 split, right?

70% or 30% of the gaming companies are driving 70% of the revenue.

So

I guess we're like gearing up for an epic battle for the large customers.

So it's a, is that a race to the bottom or like what's your thinking on that?

When you say epic battles, like capitalism?

Yeah, epic.

No, the epic battle to the death.

Yeah, no, battle with epic.

Yeah, you mean like finally we have some competition after all these anti-competitive practices?

I mean, yeah, like, you know, let's, okay, let's say hypothetically, like, playtiga comes to FastSpring, right?

Like, they're not going to pay 12%, like, probably going to go lower and then they can, yeah.

How does that?

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's important to recognize when there is a race to the bottom versus when there is value from other merchants of record and going back to picking the right merchant of record for your business.

If you want to pick just the lowest rate out there and it's a startup who has a couple customers and you don't have that much confidence in their business model and where they're going to be in a few years, like they'll have a lot of learnings to do along the way.

So you get a lower rate, but there's a risk that's being associated with that, as opposed to a customer who's a fast spring and we'll give you a very competitive low rate.

And then you'll also have these other benefits of not having to worry about things like that.

And so that's not to say we're the right answer for everybody.

There will be customers that work with fast spring, customers customers that don't.

It's important to think about which one is the right one for you.

And actually, this is a really important point that I think should be considered and isn't being considered enough today, which is having multiple merchants of record.

Interesting.

Doing that as a means.

There's two benefits to that.

One is it mitigates risk for you as a game developer.

And the second is that you can optimize performance.

So the risk mitigation piece, I think, is pretty obvious, right?

You don't have all your eggs in one basket.

Let's say you start driving half of your revenue through this alternative store.

Well, if something were to happen with that partner, then you have no means of redirecting that revenue.

So you either have to take down your shop until you get another merchant in place or immediately spin up another merchant as urgently as possible.

How do you even split it?

Yeah, how's it going?

It's a waterfall, guys.

It's a waterfall.

They're mediating the payment providers.

Yeah,

the most common way is just mediating it geographically.

So you might say, okay, in the United States, we'll give Fastbring our traffic.

In another region, it goes to a different merchant of record, and you just operate with that model.

And then if you need to shift things between one or the other, it's a very turnkey solution.

That actually goes into the performance optimization piece, too.

Different merchants have different payment method coverage and maybe different approval rates and even different effective rates for the profitability in different regions.

So what you can do, you're actually empowered then as a game developer to look at the United States and say, okay, Fastbring is performing this well.

Another merchant is performing this well.

Which one do I want to get my traffic there?

And then you can mediate and do what's best for your business too.

So you use Epic for the first million and then you have the other two?

Well, the the I'm not an expert on the Epic one, but I think to use that you have to go through the Epic Game store.

Is that right?

Yeah, Epic Game Store.

I mean

like fifteen minutes ago we were talking about creative ways of you know sending people from game without getting banned from Apple.

I'm pretty sure we're gonna get in into very creative ways of to mediate all of this so i'm pretty sure it's going to be fun okay so but as a fast spring like why should people

pick you are you doing anything else or like what's the value that you are bringing actually to the table

i think there's a a few reasons fast spring is exceptionally well pursued well situated for this this moment one is that we're a 20 year old company we're we're we've learned a lot along that way we've evolved our processes our risk model to be best in class and so we're in a a very sophisticated spot for that.

Another is we have over 3,000 customers globally.

We have that flexible capacity to scale up and to handle more demand.

Bringing on one more customer inside of gaming or even outside of gaming isn't going to be that transformative to our overall capacity.

So we have that ability to bring that on and handle that.

Another is that we're private equity backed.

We're not relying on venture capital or some other day-to-day funding stream.

We have private equity backed and we're very stable and profitable.

And so we're very confident that we're here to stay.

And the last is that we really value partnership.

With us, you're not just paying for a service and getting that return.

It's really recognizing that when our customers drive more revenue through their web store or through any fast spring checkout, that's good for them.

Like that makes it more profitable for them, but it's also good for us.

And so anything we can do to help our customers do that, we're going to do.

And that extends to rulings like these where it's having someone in-house who can understand and digest these and go out and say, hey, here's what it means for you.

Here's what you need to do.

And let's make sure you're capitalizing on it so you can grow your business too.

So

what was your advice to your customers now after the ruling?

Like, hey, guys, like now you can do so much more.

Let's work on this.

Like, how does that work?

Yeah, I think of it from two angles.

I'll approach that.

One is for customers already doing direct-to-consumer.

So that's the more traditional fast-print customer.

Another is maybe game developers we're talking to who aren't quite invested in direct-to-consumer yet, how they can get started with that.

For those already doing direct to consumer, it's to ramp up, it's to accelerate, push the pedal to the floor, start steering players more into your stores.

And that goes back to saying like, what tools do you have in the toolbox?

Leverage those tools and let's work together to make sure you can increase your direct to consumer revenue percentage with one big caveat.

Like let's keep a very close eye on how Apple reacts to this because they have not reacted yet.

I mean, they've said they've complied, which they have.

They've updated their terms of service.

They've approved apps that are implementing these new policies too.

They have to.

Yes, legally, they are obligated to.

But they have this appeal incoming and they will get creative in how they respond to.

There's a lot of money on the line.

Yeah, yeah, there's so much money on the line.

And so whether that's in the coming weeks, in the coming months, like we need to make sure that we keep an eye on this and we react to how they react and we know exactly what we need to do and how to operate within this system.

So it's operating with urgency, but also it's keeping our guard up and it's recognizing the safeguard.

The way that looks in practice is saying, Let's not implement anything that we cannot easily revert.

Let's make sure we have that, that it's not some complete architecture rewrite to have all of our revenue directed off-platform.

And then a ruling comes down that we can't do that anymore.

And so now we have to rewrite everything again, like you're creating this headache in the future.

And so you need to plan for these future scenarios in a way that you're not creating this headache for yourself in the future.

And you're expecting that that could happen, that some kind of injunction or whatever happens, and then like suddenly we stopping this for the time the US, mate.

Like, there's 15 billion being lost every year, potentially for this.

Just asking, yeah, because, like, how I see it now is like, okay, so this whole web store thing is gonna, I guess, arrive

store thing.

I told you, I will

uninformed people.

So, let's assume that, like, it's gonna be big, and investing in it Apple or no Apple doesn't matter because it's pretty much the future and you want to do it So you let's say do the safe way which is the one like let's say Monopoly go is doing the Daikon Club way which is like as you said in the beginning and you have that as default and then you do the aggressive way now because of the ruling so like go full on and like advertise everything get as much users there as possible which by the way they the user will stay there even if the ruling reverts it if I understand correctly.

So you still have the users even though you can't any new users but hopefully, you have put there, I don't know, like 80% of the payments.

Your email usually will be the page, exactly.

So, I guess it's great, even though Apple can get it there.

But then they revert back to the

sneaky way, let's say, the creative way, and you still leave it there because it's still better than nothing.

So, this is the outcome, if I understand.

So, you have this like two-way street of like being more

sneaky.

But where's the question?

Where's the question?

Where's the question?

The question is: this is what they should do.

Like, they should build anything now, even though, like, expecting that this gets reverted.

I would say that's a possible outcome, but I wouldn't expect that to be the outcome.

I think there's like a broad spectrum of outcomes of where we go from here.

So, one is exactly what you just outlined, Jokob, which is like this is a temporary world that we're living in, and those who act in this temporary world benefit the most, and then it gets reverted down the line.

And Apple's appeal is successful, and that happens.

Maybe their appeal is not.

Like, I don't know the likelihood of that, but maybe this does become the new normal.

And maybe even this is like the mild version of the interpretation of these rules.

Maybe there's a more extreme future where we just say native payments are game, where you don't need to process any payments through Apple in their ecosystem.

And instead of a mobile store, you have a store that just pops up and you're still in your game, but it's partied by an outside merchant or powered by an outside merchant of record.

Right.

And so you just get a pop-up, you do your purchase, you're still in your game, you're just reaping more profit, right?

Theoretically, that could be within these terms of engagement as lined up today.

And so, those are the kind of things I'm looking out for: what are the best practices that come about?

How does Apple respond to each of these things?

And let's just make sure that we, as games, are equipped to drive forward on whichever outcome ends up becoming reality.

But I do think there's also one point there you mentioned, Jakob, which is really important to emphasize, which is that players that shift over to the web portal, like getting over that initial hurdle is the most difficult part in making them aware of this portal, a web store, and trusting this web store, and making that initial purchase on this web store.

And if you can get them to do that in this time, even if it does end up becoming a temporary period, there's a lot of value in that because they come more sticky to your web store.

And that already knows it's actually happened.

Like, this is the store that

I need to go there and then make a purchase.

Yeah, but like once once you have it, you're pretty much the game over for all these lawsuits or whatever, because you already have the users there.

So what?

Yeah, yeah.

I think and so that gets to the question of like, what about someone who doesn't have a web store today?

Like, how can they act on this?

How can they get up and running?

And that's where I'd say, yes, like there is urgency to

do this, but again, it shouldn't come at the expense of due diligence.

Like, don't just pick a merchant of record, jump in, build this shop, because you could be introducing an unnecessary level of business risk by having this merchant that's handling a lot of your revenue in that case.

So do that, but also make sure you're equipped to capitalize on this rolling, which means basic things like region detection.

Again,

this rolling is in the United States, so you need to be able to funnel that traffic appropriately.

And then, if you want to promote it, like siphon off and segment those users and promote specifically to your United States users so that you're operating within these regulations.

So there are these different facets that need to be considered.

So then, yeah, like how does the attribution actually work on the web store?

You said the region, and then what else?

I mean, how can I be sure that I'm actually sending players from the UA campaigns to the web store so I can earn more money?

The UA piece is an interesting one, and that part I think we'll need to see how it shakes out with more of this traffic and these rulings.

Because up until now, paid UA to go to the store has been considered, but I haven't actually heard of it used that much in practice because of the cost relative to like the minor incremental benefit, right?

Like you you might be squeezing a few more percentage points of revenue going to your web store through UA, but obviously, UA is expensive.

That's more how you get users.

Yeah, they're retargeting to tell your existing players, like, hey, there's a web store, go there, and you could steer them directly there.

But that's an expensive way to do that, and something I haven't seen much of yet.

But maybe with this ruling, we do see more of that.

Yeah, so then the question is: like, who is actually going to benefit?

Is it game developers finally, or

merchants of record, or yeah, or Apovin.

Because, yes, like, honestly, this is more LTV or more revenue, which then unlocks more UA budgets, which again,

they like breaks my heart because it's gonna be more work for me on the CUA side.

Oh, sorry, Mate.

I'm sorry, Matt.

I'm sorry, Mateo.

Sorry for you.

Let me know if you're okay later, man.

Yeah, that's what this ruling is really about: how it affects Matei.

It's yeah.

the beneficiary.

So let's at the highest level take this ruling as making mobile games more profitable.

That's what this does, it shifts the profit portfolio of games and increases the gross margin percentage.

And so, when that happens, there's a number of beneficiaries to that.

Like, yes, the merchants of record powering that traffic will benefit.

Yes, the game companies themselves are benefiting by having more profit to do it as they want.

And so, that has a number of downstream effects, like UA, as you mentioned, UA budgets should should increase theoretically as games become more profitable.

But I think beyond that, innovation should increase because if this does carry forward and this becomes the new

state of play, then

we'll see the threshold for what a successful game is get lowered a little bit because games are just inherently more profitable than they were before.

And so you'll see more innovative games.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you'll see the green light being given to maybe different concepts that weren't before.

And I think the other beneficiary here will ultimately be the players, because they'll start to see more of these games.

They'll start to see more innovation.

They'll start to see more sophistication.

And even the game developers themselves.

I mean, I don't know exactly how much of this will trickle out and come down and result in maybe more roles or anything.

But at the end of the day, when games become more profitable, it benefits the entire industry.

Yeah, let's hope it's going to be actually beneficial for everybody in the gaming industry.

Yeah, exactly.

Apple.

Should we close out there?

Chip, do you want to do any last plugs before we wrap this up?

I do.

And let me also say some things to look out for, I think, is a kind of a look forward with this.

One is with the DMA.

So the DMA had very similar language, but it ended up in this place where Apple complied, but had those different stipulations and scare screens and per install fees.

And so they were fined just a couple of weeks ago, 500 million euros by the EU for not complying with the DMA.

And so they have 60 days to respond to that.

And so we're in this kind of back and forth with the DMA.

There's a possibility it looks very similar to what this ruling had in the US.

So keep an eye on that.

And we'll see in Europe if the terms change there as well.

In the US, let's look and see how Apple responds.

Like what are their policy changes that they implement?

Because I do not think this will be the last shoe to drop on this.

Globally, there's a ruling called the Smartphone Act in Japan, which has very

similar phrasing to the DMA and this ruling in the U.S.

in terms of opening and allowing allowing steering to these web stores.

And that's to go into effect by the end of this year.

And so we are seeing this pop up very much, but it's on a piecemeal geographic basis.

And so it's important to make sure that you're aware of this so that you can shift and reap the profit whenever those happen.

So a lot more to come, just the beginning here, but it is an exciting point.

It's going to happen also in Japan.

That's interesting.

But I guess it also just applies to Japanese gaming studios because only Japanese gaming studios can be successful there.

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

So i guess in closing i would just say we're we're at a new balance of power in the mobile ecosystem things have really changed significantly in the last week it's empowering game developers more than ever before but this is also a very quickly evolving landscape and we're going to learn a lot more in the next few months so it's an exciting time

awesome man Thanks, Chief, for coming.

It was pretty, pretty cool.

Clear, concise, perfect.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Numbers as well, how much money you can actually earn on the web web shows, and how much money people are making on the web shows.

So, it's always good to hear numbers, what you should do, and thanks a lot for listeners that are around LA May 19.

Definitely come to the party link in the show notes.

If you want to reach out to Chip, I'm gonna include his details as well in the show notes, and then see you next time.

Thank you very much.

Cheers, bye-bye.