Video game developers accuse Amazon of harmful pricing

PanARMENIAN.Net - A group representing individual video game developers has accused Amazon.com Inc of setting pricing terms that could harm them in the long run and of trying to win a near monopoly selling games made on Android software.

The International Game Developers Association in an e-mail to members on Thursday, April 14, took issue with Amazon for requiring developers to permanently lower their prices on Amazon if they offer a discount, even temporarily, on another outlet, Reuters reported.

"Amazon has little incentive not to use a developer's content as a weapon with which to capture marketshare from competing app stores," the IGDA said in its note. The group also said Amazon's steep discounting of games hurts developers by unnecessarily lowering prices on games that are selling well.

That echoed book publishers' accusations in 2010 that the low prices Amazon wanted to charge for books on its Kindle e-reader, even for bestsellers, cheapened the value of books.

Amazon, which last month launched its "Appstore" with games developed using Google's Android software, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last month, Amazon raised the ire of music labels when it launched a service that lets customers store songs and play them on a variety of phones and computers without warning them first. Amazon executive are meeting with music industry companies on Thursday, sources told Reuters this week.