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

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 um value in place can shift 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 [Music] we're the two midnight crew talking to the early master tracking data through the cyerspace like a wizard. in Japanese and a half gamer

talking they click it fast don't [Music] delayh that's definitely happening I maybe the very beginning hello everybody this is an emerg episode. My name is Matthew. I'm Felix Bberg. And I'm And we And we are your host. Okay. We haven't timed it yet. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. Well, well. And we have uh our very special guest, Chip from Fastring. Welcome, Chip, to the podcast. Thanks, Mate. 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 Thirstston. I'm the head of gaming here at Fastpring. Uh so Fastpring 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, uh, 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, uh, evolving landscape of direct to consumer. Also, briefly before Fastbring, 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 last few years. Yeah. Yakub eyes almost fell off his head like Scoply. Wow. Yeah. I I know. I knew that. So I'm just thinking like Monopoly got tyon club the director Kazoumer thing. Yeah. Yeah. That that's a that's that's a whirlwind that that that tycoon club is really exciting. Nice. Okay. So we're talking about about

Apple's court laws and how that's a win for mobile game developers. But before that, we actually there's a there's an interesting thing happening in LA. We're doing with Chip and the and the whole company keyboard studio. So there's going to be yacht party 19th of May 700 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 in the shop. I saw I I saw there was lasers as well. It was a laser yaw 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, I don't worry. I will post a lot of uh a lot of photos and videos from from that. Yeah. If you find this conversation interesting from today, definitely come to the Y party in LA because that's where you can meet people from Fastpring. You can talk more about this court ruling that we're going to

talk about today. What actually happened? Yeah, I I have to be honest with you, party mate. It's really just an elaborate excuse to get to hang out with you. I think after after being turned away from your GDC party, I Yeah. 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 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 uh 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 or mo of mobile gaming, the model was that Apple and Google took 30%

of revenue, right? That was just the fee for doing business in mobile gaming. And we all accepted that and move 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. Um, 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 Scople, Playa 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 there than a mobile purchase. Yeah. I heard a rumor that what Play Tiger does is if you spend over K, they send you an iPad with their web store installed. They get around it. That's how they they have a VIP like concier service, right? So when you spend X amount of money, they message you and then if you 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 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 need to Yeah. You couldn't link directly from the 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

you you Chip can't speak to this, right? What I'm hearing with the clients that I worked with that were doing web stores how they were directing users to like the p like the online stores was two ways mainly. It was retargeting. So they were using like DSPs like remercher 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. Two ways. That's the two ways that I heard were the most popular. Right. Yeah. Interesting. I think there those are sneaky ways to go about it for sure. There are also more um genuine ways too. For example, linking into a 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 flashing store

button up in the side that we're like we're trying to navigate places. That's the Polyot Icon Club right there. Yeah, there you go. So that that's been 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 Scopley Platika investing not just in ideas and in 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 uninforceable. 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 uh have 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 play as 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, you can't 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 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. Uh there's a lot of reasons to keep your guard up, which I'm sure we'll get into, but that 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. The I guess 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 let's stay here. I want to like 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 1st 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 giant army of lawyers at this and prolong for 30 years. So they still can do it but it's already in force therefore do I get that 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 that's my question if appeal happens. So now it's actually the time is playing against Apple not for Apple like it always has.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Always playing for Apple like we dragged this on blah blah blah. So now they need to be super fast because people are getting users out of the platform. Yes. 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 and do I get that right that now it goes where? Like Supreme Court or like the last instance of judiciary or where where this is heading currently for the appeal? That is beyond my legal understanding. I don't know the next step of this. Am I Am I like just what I wanted to say with this like how many of these appeal hoops do we need to go under this is like this is the deal. This is the deal. End of sentence. No more appeals. Yeah. I mean I I 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, 30% is 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 remember that it's huge. And so beyond the appeal, if I if I try to advocate for Apple here, which I want to be clear, I'm with Basping, like I have a bias against them here, forever, don't worry. But if I 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 e 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. That 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%. That's something they obviously haven't wanted to change uh 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 game. I really want to hear what value they can add on the level of 30%. Yeah, a credit card credit card fee is what like 0.8 like 1% maybe, right? It's a 30% outrageous especially with the zero organic discovery that yeah you open you open the store and then you

have supercell polar dream games monopoly go whatever like all these big big games as featured on the top of the store. Everybody else is basically dead. That's it. Like there's your 30%. 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 defending 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 fastpring will help you get a similar level of convenience and minimizing friction and have that payment coverage and confident scalability. Um, but that's something that needs to be considered as you shift your payments off platform. you're 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 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 the one you you chose it's 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 you're trusting this partner with revenue like with revenue for your game. They are the ones handling that 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 Fastrank, 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 happy 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 ruling. Do do I understand this 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 we really need like so much capacity. Wait, let me let me 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 uh same time period Google Play generated 21 billion. So that's close to 55 billion. What is the conversation right now in Fastpring? And what do you think is happening at all other payment providers right now? Like what's what's the 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 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 we're moving in lock step 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, chargebacks, being able to detect that.

And we're the ones accountable for a lot of that as the merchant. And when it 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 it's your biggest vendor 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 fraudulent that are not actually fraudulent. And so, that's again where we have to make sure we communicate with our 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 was asking for? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's the magic number? Like what what's the what's the transaction? 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. That was

what Felix 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 I don't I don't think of the figure like percentage of revenue for Apple. I think about it within Fast Springs impact that 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 makeor 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 um value in place

can shift 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 does 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. Yeah, it has I mean the honest answer is it hasn't shifted much yet because it's been 4 days since this ruling and so I think customers are are getting their ducks in a row right and saying let's get our interpretation of this um 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 profit. So, let's make sure we

understand this that we're 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 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 1 of May. Yeah. Yeah, but then okay, so you said like they're getting the ducks in draw like what does that even mean for the developers 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 are there is there a new section 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 uh what was it 2 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 at 12%. In my experience working with some large clients 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 7030 split, right? 70 or 30% of the gaming companies are driving 70% of the revenue. 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 battle was that capitalism? Yeah. Yeah. Epic. No,

the epic battle to the death. Yeah. No. Battle with epic. But 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 Playa comes to Fast Spring, 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 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 fastring 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'll be customers that work with fast marine customers that don't. Um it's 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 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 does that waterfall? It's It's a waterfall, guys. It's a waterfall. They're mediating They're mediating the the payment providers. Yeah. The most the most common way is just mediating it geographically. So, you might say, "Okay, in the United

States, we'll get fast bringing 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, Fastring is 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 15 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 going to get in into very

creative ways to mediate all of this. So, I'm pretty sure it's going to be fine. 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 fasting is exceptionally well pursuited 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 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 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 what would what was your advice to your customers now after the ruling? Like, hey guys, like now you can do so much more. Let's let's work on this. Like how how does that work? Yeah, I think of it from two angles. I'll approach that. One is for customers already doing direct to consumers. That's the more traditional fast bringing 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. They've 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. Yeah, I mean they have to. Yes. Legally they are obligated to, but they have this appeal incoming and they will uh get creative uh in how they respond. Money on the line. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much money online and so whether that's in the coming weeks, in the coming months, like we need to make sure that we we keep an eye on this and we react to how they react and we 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 it's recognizing the safeguard. The way that looks in practice is saying like 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 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 because like how I see it now is is like okay so this this whole web web store thing is going to I guess arrive the whole web store thing I told you I I voice of uninformed people so so let's assume that like it's going to 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 dyon club way which is like as you said in the And you 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 pump any new users but hopefully you have put there I don't know like 80% of your email usually when you pay usually. So I guess it's it's great even though Apple can get it there but then they revert back to the sh like sneaky way let's say the the creative way and you still leave it there because it's still better than nothing. So this this is the outcome if I understood. Yeah. So you have this like two-way street of like being more question like where's the question? Where's the question? The question is this is what they should do like they they should build anything now even

though like expecting that this get rebirthed. 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, Yokob, 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 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 out today. And so that those are the kind of things I'm looking out for. It's like 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 uh drive forward on whichever outcome uh ends up becoming reality. But I do think there's one 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 uh web 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 is 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 they already know it's actually happened like this is the store that I I need I need to go there and then make purchase. Yeah. But like once once you have it, you're pretty much like 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 to 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 unnecessarily 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 ruling, which means basic things like region detection. Again, this ruling 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 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 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 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 these 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 the minor incremental benefit, right? Like you might be squeezing a few more percentage points of revenue going to your web store through UA, but obviously UA is expensive. Retargeting more, right? That's more how you get users. Yeah, they're retargeting to tell tell your existing players like, "Hey, there's a web store. Go there." Then 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. Yeah. Or up

because yes, like honestly is more LTV or more revenue which then unlocks more UA budgets which again they like breaks my heart because it's going to be more work for me on the UA side. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you. Let me know if you're okay later, man. Yeah, that's what this ruling is really about is how it affects mate. It's um no the 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 uh 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 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

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 uh 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 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 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 it's going to be actually beneficial for everybody in the gaming industry. Yeah, except that. Should we uh close

out there, Chip, do you want to do any last plugs before we wrap this up? I do. And and let me also say some things to look out for I think is a 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 scarecreens and per install fees. And so they were fined just a couple 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 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 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 similar phrasing to the DMA and this ruling in the US in terms of opening and 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 peacemeal 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. So it's going to happen also in Japan. is interesting. But I guess it's al 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, Chip, for coming. This 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 shows

and how much money people are making on the webops. So, it's it's always good to hear numbers, what you should do. And thanks a lot for listeners. They're around LA made 19. Definitely come to the party. Link in the show note. If you want to reach out to to Chip, I'm going to include his details as well in the in the show notes. And then see you next time. Thank you very much. Cheers. Byebye. Bye. [Music] Hey, [Music]