Google recently revealed that the Google Play Store will allow more real-money games (RMG) on the Play Store this year by permitting a wider variety of games in the category that abide by regional regulations.
The search engine behemoth announced that the program offering extended support for real-money gaming would launch in June in Mexico, Brazil, and India, with plans to roll it out to additional nations later.
A new service price structure for subscriptions and in-app purchases is something that Google is thinking about. The corporation did not, however, provide many specifics regarding the percentage it will collect from developers.
“With this policy update, we will also be evolving our service fee model for RMG to reflect the value Google Play provides and to help sustain the Android and Play ecosystems. We are working closely with developers to ensure our new approach reflects the unique economics and various developer earning models of this industry,” Karan Gambhir, Director, Global Trust & Safety Partnerships at Google said in a blog post.
For the most part, Google has approved real-money gaming apps that fall under the purview of regional regulatory authorities. The corporation will now let a wider variety of legal but unregulated real-money gaming apps as a result of the policy change.
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In 2021, Google began developing the Play Store to offer real-money gaming apps. In India, a test project was launched in 2022 to permit Rummy and fantasy sports apps on the regional Play Store. Google gave apps that were already granted a one-year extension till January 15 of last year. Additionally, as per the most recent statement, the pilot apps have until June 30 to make their mark.
Due to the app’s newly added fantasy sports components, Google removed Paytm’s app from the Play Store in 2020.
There were rules around ID and age verification in the pilot as well. A similar Google pilot program was launched in Mexico in November of last year and will run until June 30. Following that, developers will be allowed to release their real-money gambling applications on the Play Store outside of the categories for fantasy sports.
Google added that in the next months, it will release comprehensive guidelines about the move, which would include safeguards like age restrictions and geo-restrictions.
The Google Play Store is under pressure from all sides to permit developers to accept alternate payment methods, and one of the main drivers of that pressure will be a new service charge on in-app purchases. It normally provides a 4% reduction on service rates under its user-choice billing model, which was launched in 2022 and still has chosen partners.
