Infographics: How App Store revenue is distributed among game developers

App Store revenue will not change much after the current commission reduction, Sensor Tower said. Analysts have estimated that 96.7% of the gaming part of the store consists of developers with less than $1 million in revenue. But at the same time, their games account for only 2% of the expenses of iOS gamers.

In its latest study, Sensor Tower looked at how game developers earned from January to October 2020.

The main thing from the report:

• there are about 29 thousand developers in the App Store, to whose accounts at least some money comes from games;
• 96.7% of them (28 thousand teams) have revenue for January-October — less than $ 1 million.;
• approximately 50% of all game developers (14.4 thousand teams) had revenue of less than a thousand dollars;
• 23% (9.5 thousand developers) were able to earn around $10 thousand;
• all together, developers who failed to become millionaires earned $834 million (2% of the earnings of all App Store games);
• the remaining $38.4 billion (98% of game earnings) came from 940 teams;
• those who managed to earn from $1 million to $5 million on games turned out to be 0.6% in the Apple store (these developers answered only for 0.5% of the earnings of all store games);

According to analysts, every year developers in the App Store start earning more and more. In 2018, 98% of them received less than $1 million. In 2019, 97.3% of developers remained in low income. In 2020, this number dropped to 96.7%.

At the same time, the share of total gaming revenue generated by such developers gradually began to fall. Two years ago, they collected $955.4 million, or 3% of the revenue of all games. Last year, developers’ revenue was $878 million — 2.3%. But here it is worth noting that this is data for the full 12 months;

But the share of total revenue from developers with incomes above $1.5 million is growing from year to year. In 2018, it was 96.4%. In 2019 — 97.1%. In 2020 — 97.4%.

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Sensor Tower believes that Apple’s decision to reduce the commission for individual developers from 30% to 15% will have a weak impact on App Store revenue. Nevertheless, it will still “shake up” the market, after which the owners of other stores may also want to make concessions and reduce the percentage of mandatory deductions.

Also on the topic:

• Apple will reduce the commission in the App Store to 15%. But not everyoneDetails of Apple’s program to reduce the commission to 15% for developers with low income have appeared
• Tim Sweeney: “we are not fighting for a low commission”
• Is there any news?