Supercell, Warner Bros. Games and Scopely lead a new trend of building independent web stores for their games to avoid the high commissions required by the App Store and Google Play for in-game transactions.
Supercell has built its Supercell Store for Clash of Clans, and the players in some European countries and in Japan can now buy the Gold Pass Bundle and Gold Pass or send them as a gift to friends.
A screenshot of Supercell Store for Clash of Clans
Compared with Supercell, Warner Bros. Games has a store for more items for Game of Thrones: Conquest, a free-to-play strategy game. Players can buy in-game currency Gems in different quantities on the website.
A screenshot of the web store for Game of Thrones: Conquest
Besides the above two companies, Scopely offers a web store for Marvel Strike Force and another title Star Trek Fleet Command. The stores require only a Scopely or Facebook ID.
A screenshot of the web store for Marvel Strike Force
Currently, players rely heavily on the App Store and Google Play when buying mobile games or in-game items. The two companies ask for up to a 30% commission from app developers.
Although Epic Games sued Apple for the latter’s potential monopoly, and Apple and Google cut off their fees from 30% to 15% for parts of the apps following regulations in some countries, the commission is still a burden for game developers.
These new web stores provide convenience for players and developers, but their security remains in question and may bring more costs for developers to manage the ID database.
Source: Supercell