Google Play Store is planning to crackdown against developers that avoid Google’s policy of in-app purchases, reported Bloomberg last week. According to the report, the plan will be officially announced in the coming weeks in the form of updated guidelines.
Following the announcement of the updated guidelines, developers will be given some time to properly follow them before the crackdown starts.
Similar to Apple’s App Store, Google requires developers to give the company a cut of all their in-app purchases, which is why almost all apps are required to have in-app purchases and pay taxes to Google in order to stay on the platform. However, this system is not strictly applied to big names such as Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, etc. They all have separate billing systems that are different from Google’s own system.
Google and Apple’s billing systems came under fire lately ever since they barred Epic Games’ Fornite from entering their app stores as it refused to pay a 30% share of all its in-app purchases. Epic Games, which is also a part of the new Coalition for App Fairness, decided to fight against the policies and practices of these stores regarding in-app purchases as numerous other developers have been a victim to it as well.
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As a result, Google finally decided to apply all of its in-app purchase policies to all developers including big names such as Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon. These apps will soon be required to update to reflect their iOS counterparts.
As for Google’s crackdown plan and updated guidelines, it remains to be seen how these will be applied or how they will differ from older Google policies.
