The 30% Era Is Over. Google Play's Games GM Explains What Comes Next.

Here’s why this is important… For fifteen years, the 30% platform fee was the closest thing mobile gaming had to a law of physics. Last week it cracked. Google Play is decoupling its service fee from its billing fee, opening alternative billing and external purchase links in the US, UK, and EEA, and cutting the standard rate to 20% for new installs.

Run your own payments and the billing fee disappears entirely. Google didn't wake up generous. Epic sued, regulators pushed, and a settlement forced the change.

But for game and app developers, motive matters less than math. The new structure reshapes web shop economics, subscription margins, and the entire UA calculus for anyone spending against LTV on Android. The fine print cuts both ways.

Players who installed before the rollout are billed at 25%, five points above new installs, which means your most loyal cohorts are your most expensive ones. While rate cuts might have stolen the headlines, it’s the Level Up program from Google Play that is built to offer Play Store users engagement boosting experiences in form of a personalized hub, a sidekick overlay, quests, leagues and much more. All with extremely simple integration and further rate cuts (case study: How Subsway Surfers boosts engagement by 45% with Level Up ) The Level Up rate card doesn't open until September 30 and comes with compliance strings attached, including a Sidekick overlay developers can't fully control.

So we sent our hardest questions to the man responsible for all of it. Meet Aurash Aurash Mahbod is the GM of Games on Google Play, which makes him the executive accountable for every number in this announcement. He agreed to a written deep dive with us and, to his credit, didn't duck a single question or follow-up; Jen and Mishka from Deconstructor of Fun launched his way.

Not on why loyal players cost developers more, not on Sidekick, not on whether leaving Play billing shadow-bans your ranking. Where he disagreed with our framing, he said so and argued his case.   Aurash’s answers are published in full, edited only for formatting.

Deconstructor of Fun: You're charging developers more for their loyal players than for brand-new ones. Why? What's the thinking there?

  By universally reducing the standard service fee on one-time purchases to 20% for new installs (and separating the billing fee), we are meaningfully lowering the barrier to acquiring new players and helping studios scale their audiences faster. For existing installs, the 25% base fee reflects the platform’s historical and ongoing investment in acquiring, supporting, and maintaining that established user base. It’s also important to note that this structure is decoupled from the billing fee, so developers have the flexibility to use alternative billing for loyal players if they feel their own systems better serve that relationship, thereby removing the separate Google Play billing fee entirely.