Zynga boss Frank Gibeau says Apple is not providing enough value in exchange for its 30% cut of all App Store IAPs.
Speaking to The Game Business, the Zynga boss described the recent court ruling that removed all of Apple’s restrictions around messaging and payments in the US App Store as “a profound change in the platform”.
He also said that as a result of the ruling, the Take-Two-owned firm is going after the direct-to-consumer space “very aggressively”.
Elsewhere in the interview Gibeau also suggested that despite the failure and recent closure of Star Wars Hunters, Zynga would like to launch another big-name mobile shooter soon.
On lack of value developers get from App Store featuring and the Apple ecosystem in general, Gibeau said: “In the early days, getting App Store placement was a godsend for generating organics and you could build hits by getting that placement and that merchandising on the app stores. It just isn’t true anymore.”
“And so when you look at the marketing and the value that you would generate from some of those programs, it’s diminished completely,” he continued. “So the question is… how much value am I getting for these fees? They’re just not in balance anymore.”
On the recent court ruling that removed all of Apple’s messaging and payment restrictions in the US App Store, Gibeau said: “I think we’re going to be able to invest in the business more aggressively, reach new audiences and create more value for players, which is a good thing.”
“The notion that you can have a direct relationship with your players and serve them better, and give them more value, is huge,” he continued.
“So it’s not just about making more margin from the platforms because we’re going direct…we can perform better CRM, we can build better communities, we can understand more clearly what’s happening in the games because while we get a lot of telemetry, sometimes you just like to ask a question and see how things are doing.”
“This is a big change for mobile. It’s been something that we’ve been going after very aggressively.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Gibeau talked through what went wrong with Star Wars Hunters, the long-in-development shooter made by CSR studio NaturalMotion. The game failed to gain any real traction, and was shut down within a year of its launch.
“We built a great tech base and we built a fun game with a great core loop,” Gibeau said. “The problem was it wasn’t a viable business. We weren’t able to generate the organic installs from the license…it didn’t engage over the long term.”
Nonetheless, Gibeau said Zynga is now “looking at another idea in that category” with another IP. “Sometimes you’ll miss on the first shot,” he added.
“But there’s something of value in it. You learn something about the market, you also learn about your team…the action shooter category on mobile is a very large and growing category, and we’d like to be there.”
“Now we have an Unreal tech base, with some great leads in terms of the engineering and developers and designers…. Now it’s take the learnings from Star Wars Hunters and applying it to another shot on goal with another intellectual property.”
