This week paired a rare audited look at how far DTC has scaled inside a public publisher with continued uncertainty over the rules governing out-of-app payments. MTG is already modeling Google’s new US external-link fees as a real cost, while Apple’s antitrust discovery is still shaping the terms US publishers must plan around.

MTG's DTC share reaches 42% of group revenue as Google fees narrow the cost advantage

Modern Times Group (MTG), a Stockholm-listed mobile games group, reported that direct-to-consumer now accounts for 42% of group revenue in Q3, up from 38% in Q2 and 26% a year earlier; at its midcore division the figure reached 55%, versus 33% in the same quarter last year. MTG flagged that Google's new rules on alternative billing — under which Google began charging platform fees on external links for Android players in the US on October 1 — "reduced some of the cost advantages of DTC from these players," and said its full-year margin outlook already reflects that impact. Group net sales were flat year-on-year at SEK 2.99bn ($308m), down 2% in constant currencies; adjusted EBITDA rose 3% to SEK 693m ($71m), a 23% margin, as lower platform fees from D2C were largely offset by user-acquisition spend of SEK 1.18bn ($122m), up 6% and equal to 39% of revenue. MTG also postponed a planned India IPO of one of its studios, citing Indian capital-market conditions, and reaffirmed full-year pro-forma revenue growth guidance of 5–8%.

Why it matters: This is concrete, audited evidence that out-of-app channels are now a core revenue line rather than an experiment, while also showing Google's US external-link fee as a real cost that erodes — but does not erase — the economics of linking out. The operative question for publishers is no longer whether D2C works but how much of the platform fee can be engineered out of the funnel, which means building the fee math into the model from day one rather than assuming store-exit equals zero fees.

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Apple's DOJ antitrust case heats up in discovery over fees and guideline enforcement

Court filings across the first week of November show third parties resisting the scope of subpoenas in the US Department of Justice's antitrust case against Apple, filed in March 2024 by the DOJ, 15 states and DC. Apple has subpoenaed companies including Epic Games, Samsung Electronics America, Meta, Oura and Garmin for defense material, while the DOJ and plaintiff states have subpoenaed Roblox, Epic and others. Epic argued Apple's document demands are disproportionately burdensome but offered to produce Fortnite user and revenue data, its Google and Samsung contracts, and records on Apple's Core Technology Fee; Samsung says agreed searches have already yielded nearly 900,000 documents. Roblox is disputing government requests about how Apple applies its App Store Guidelines to developers, which the government argues could show whether Apple enforces its rules consistently. A Japan-based instant-gaming company is separately resisting Apple's requests about its App Store policy lobbying, citing the First Amendment. Several parties sought until November 11 to keep negotiating before declaring an impasse, against reported and contested settlement talks.

Why it matters: The external-payment entitlements US publishers rely on exist because of exactly this kind of antitrust pressure, and discovery fights over the Core Technology Fee and consistent guideline enforcement go to what out-of-app linking will cost and whether access is durable. Treat today's US external-payment terms as provisional and build flexibility into checkout routing, so a change in platform rules is a configuration change rather than a re-platforming project.

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The takeaway

This week’s pattern is maturation: DTC is now a measurable, audited share of publisher revenue, but the platform fees and legal terms surrounding it continue to move. The priority is therefore clean economics—understanding the true cost of each payment route and modeling external-link fees rather than assuming that leaving the store means zero platform costs. From Tokenz’s perspective as a Merchant of Record, the role is to absorb tax, payment, refund, fraud, and compliance overhead so publishers can route transactions based on margin and adjust their checkout setup as platform rules change.