Google & Epic settlement ends 30% Play Store fees and eases third-party app store rules
Google will eliminate its longstanding 30% Play Store transaction fee, changing how Android developers handle in-app payments and subscriptions. The revised structure reduces commissions to 20% for in-app purchases and 10% for recurring subscriptions, with an additional 5% fee if developers rely on Google’s billing system.
Alongside lowering fees, Google is rolling out updates to its handling of third-party app stores and alternate billing systems. Through the new Registered App Stores program, qualifying Android app stores that meet quality and safety standards will benefit from a more streamlined installation process. This initiative will launch outside the United States first, and Google plans to extend it to the U.S. as well, pending court approval.
These changes are the result of the ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games in 2020. Google submitted the proposed updates to a federal court in San Francisco as part of this litigation. The new fee structure and developer programs are set to launch in the European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and United States by June 30, 2026. Australia will follow in September, with Korea and Japan included by the end of 2026. Global availability is scheduled by September 30, 2027.
- App Store
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- Proprietary
Related news
External links
- A new era for choice and openness Google • Official source
- Google isn’t waiting for a settlement — the 30 percent Android app store fee is deadThe Verge
- Google settles with Epic Games, drops its Play Store commissions to 20%TechCrunch
- Google ends its 30 percent app store fee and welcomes third-party app storesEngadget
- Major Google Play Store Changes End 30% Fees, Third-Party Stores Easier to UsePCMAG
- Google's Epic Settlement Brings Fortnite Back to Google Play, Plus Broad Dev DiscountsCNET
Comments
https://killedbygoogle.com/
SPREAD THE WORD EVERYWHERE
???
Fuck Google! this will literally make all Android phones useless, the same as crApple...
I really don't get all the AI hate. Is it because of the training data practices? I mean, this ship has already sailed, AI is here to stay. Anyways, here is the link to the official announcement, since so many of you are still doubtful it came from Google. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/a-new-era-for-choice-and-openness.html
ruining the envoirment (ai data centers) stealing water from rural towns (ai data centers), chatbots giving "therapy" to unwell people making them way more unstable, monoculture extremism (ai bots & chatbots), making english L2 speakers talk all the same (ai translation), driving up prices for items only for the 1% to use (ai data centers), making misinfomation (ai chatbots & image/video generation), making everything feel worthless & cheap since you can make anything in under 1 minute (ai text/image/video/audio generation), dissolving critical thinking [and also with a side of misinfo aswell!] (ai chatbots), theres way more that i could talk about but it would be too long to type all of it, im not even gonna get into the fact that openAI signed a deal with the department of war hence allowing them to make mass surveillance machines for everybody and making missiles entirely controled by AI and i dont like the fact that theres gonna be missiles not even double checked by a human to potentialing blocking it if goes haywire and blowing up a town for no reason
I'm not familiar with the stealing water issue, but I have seen an analysis comparing worldwide AI data centers estimated water footprint in 2025 reaching 764.6 billion liters (on the high end), to golf courses irrigation in the US accounting to 2.85 trillion liters. This is just a simple comparison to point out that we hear a lot about AI water usage, but not much about golf course's. Billions of liters of water sound like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, it amounts to a very low percentage (projected 0.008% of agriculture use by 2030). Also, due to growing concerns about this from the public, many data centers are moving to closed loop systems or air cooling. Maybe there was a local issue with rural towns, but water shouldn't be a problem overall. The missiles part is simply not true, at least not yet. Anyways, I just felt like addressing this because it's used so often. You raised many other concerns which I'm not going to argue and may even agree with. The fact is that there is no way to "uninvent" something, we'll have to deal with the ramifications of AI, whether we like it or not.
People crying about AI but they have cars which are waaaaaaay worse than any GenAI. Same goes for planes.
They only follow the trend and repeat whatever they heard from others, not actually contemplate about it a bit. Funny enough, that's exactly how AI's target audience is: never double-checking their info. Like, the first external link in this post is clearly labeled "official source", but somehow it's the fault of PCMAG for using AI, lol.
Please do not include AI-generated imagery in your articles. You do not need a graph to show basic news. Well formatted article is enough.
This is the image from the official Google announcement, we didn't make it.
This is so blatantly made with AI! apparently, PC mag thought is ok to use fake slop.
Funny thing, apparently they credited Google for the image. I wonder if it actually came from Google, or if it was made by PCMAG with Nano Banana model.
it came from google paul said it himself
Makes me think of the countdown on keepandroidopen.org. Glad we have alternativeto in order to find better solutions.