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> I’ll also reiterate that the majority of devs pay 15% now on the App Store. Not 30%.

Probably not relative to total revenue. But it doesn’t really change much. To be fair I don’t have a problem at all with 15% or even 30% but with the fact that Apple is running a lite extortion racket by not allowing any competition.

> how a company pays for its RnD internally, one cannot conclusively say that the consumers are the ones who pay for the HW/OS

I don’t think the exact nuances of internal accounting (even if they do it this way instead of just putting all revenue into a single “pot”) really changes anything.

It’s pretty clear (based on all evidence from the last 30+ years) that platforms can generate significantly higher revenue by maximizing the amount of third party software and by giving away development tools/etc. for free or significantly below cost than by trying to extract as much money as feasible possible from 3rd part developers (and it wasn’t a huge concern anyway since all major desktop platforms have always been mostly open)

> why are we okay with the others that are arguably more? And why do people defend the other marketplaces ?

IMHO mainly because Apple has a very large market share and is effectively a monopoly in certain ways.

If you want to develop a mobile app/game you can’t not make it available on iOS. It’s just not an option. This gives Apple a huge amount of pricing power and effectively allows them to exploit developers and consumers by generating a surplus they don’t have to work for.

It a scale of course but no other company is quite in the same position. Steam can lose most of their customers if they stop providing value. Even Google is in a much weaker position (consequently they don’t have such strict controls on iAPs) since phone makers can (and have) make their own app stores, side loading etc. I think consoles are closers but they are purely an entertainment product with a lot of alternatives and substitutes.

Overall I personally believe consumer surplus should most dwarf everything else to an extent. Therefore I don’t see any reason why can’t we apply “arbitrary” rules/standards to corporations based on their size and influence on the market.