App store availability (or: The Whaler's Lament)

[toblix]

So there are two games for iOS I would probably buy if I could: Chinatown Wars HD and Rage HD, both for iPad. They're not available here, though, and I've tried contacting Rockstar and id about it, not surprisingly without any response from either. My impression was that one of the things with the iOS app storw was that you can publish to almost everywhere at once. Is there some region marketing bullshit thing going on that I don't know about? Can't they just check all the boxes when publishing their game, or are there lots of contracts and paperwork for each country? There are like a billion fucking fart apps.

[Gwardinen]

I don't know, but I have noticed certain apps not being available in the UK that I've heard about from US sites/people before. I'm not sure whether it's a legal thing or what, but it is irritating.

[Armchair General]

What's the matter with fart apps?

[toblix]

So I emailed both id and Rockstar, and after 20 minutes I got this from id:

I'm sorry you have been unable to purchase id Software games through your app store. The issue is due to sales and taxes. Most small developers release their apps globally and don't worry about paying taxes in any countries that Apple doesn't collect and pay taxes. Apple only handles taxes across 25% of their global iTunes stores.

When we were just id Software it was okay to sell our games in every store as we were small and we didn’t worry about these details like most garage or independent developers. By contrast, a large publisher like EA can handle paying taxes everywhere. For medium size developers (id Software under ZeniMax Media), we are stuck between not being so small that we cannot pay taxes and risk legal action, but not so big that we have the resources to handle taxes and legal costs in every country that Apple fails to cover.

We are actively looking at this issue, and we hope to bring id Software games to more countries soon, but... no promises at this stage. We will re-evaluate our global sales efforts this fall. We hope to bring our games to your home soon.

Id Mobile

So apparently it's a tax thing, which is fair, I guess.

[elmuerte]

That's odd. Because ZeniMax has an UK office, which means they could handle taxes for all EU countries from the UK. Or they could do it from their French, German or Dutch office. Through those offices ZeniMax handles the whole retail publishing stuff in Europe, so why couldn't they also do digital?

Of course that doesn't change much for Norway considering it's not EU.

Rockstar really can't play that card. Take2 is simply too huge for that.

[toblix]

Yeah, now that I've gotten a real reply (from id, at least) I can't really be angry for them not bothering with Norway due to this sort of thing. I guess it's only fair there should be at least a couple of downsides to not joining the EU.