The Microsoft Store eliminates publishing fees for Windows apps

Microsoft is waiving the fee to sign up and publish to the Microsoft Store beginning in June, as the company tries to appeal to Windows app developers and their pocketbooks. It would make the Microsoft Store on Windows the first “free” store for publishing apps, Microsoft said at its annual Build developer conference.

Although it’s difficult to determine how many apps Microsoft sells via its Microsoft Store app, most sources place it less than a million — and those numbers are from several years ago. Even Phil Spencer, now the chief of Microsoft Gaming, has said that the Store “sucks,” primarily owing to its poor design and lack of popular applications.

Since then, Microsoft has revamped the Microsoft Store app, but the problems remain. Now, Microsoft is trying to lure more publishers by streamlining the process and lowering the price.

Individual developers will be able to sign up and publish to the Store for free in June, Microsoft said. “This will make Microsoft Store on Windows the first global digital store to waive the fee for publishing apps,” it said.

The new plan promises benefits to users, too. Today, even when a publisher publishes a new version of a Win32 app — the traditional .EXE file — there’s no guarantee that the latest version will appear on the Store. That has led to a frequent user complaint that Store apps are out of date. Now, not only will you able to find the updated version, the Store app page will actually list the last time that the app was updated. You’ll be able to download the latest version from the Store’s “Downloads” page or just from the app’s page, itself.

Given that the Windows Store was announced in 2011, and shifted to the Microsoft Store in 2017, it’s kind of ludicrous that Microsoft is just now trying to address these issues.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Microsoft is also promising developers additional features like improved privacy policy hosting, additional help and support, and a “policy change to allow a noninteractive progress bar for Win32 app installation.” The company is also promising that developers will be able to run app campaigns to promote their apps, and receive better “health reports” that will provide insights into the crash rates, hang rates, and affected device rates.

It’s not clear what fees Microsoft is waiving

What isn’t clear, however, is what fees Microsoft is waiving. Microsoft already charges a one-time fee of just $19 for publishing an app to the Microsoft Store, or about $99 for a company.

Microsoft already allows developers to keep all of the revenue from non-gaming apps if they use their own commerce platform. For games, Microsoft charges 12 percent for games or 15 percent for apps if the developers uses Microsoft’s own commerce platform. Are these the fees Microsoft is waiving? We’re not sure, and we’ve asked Microsoft for clarification.

By contrast, the third-party app Steamdb.com says that Steam currently hosts 394,779 games at the time of this writing. No matter how many fees Microsoft waives, the company will be hard-pressed to overturn Steam’s reputation as the main storefront for PC games. For apps in general? Well, maybe. At least Microsoft is addressing some of its issues.