This is kind of a complicated story. I'm not really trying to talk about whether you're right or wrong. You're saying something objectively true, it just doesn't mean what you think it means, and it doesn't translate to the role that CS2 plays in Steam, or how the CS2 audience differs from the rest of the audience on Steam.
On the one hand, the top of the app store is free to play experiences - apps like Spotify and Tinder, games like Monopoly Go.
There are places where "nobody" (close to 0%) pay for Spotify subscriptions (representative of all subscriptions), like Japan, even though the iPhone is more popular there than anywhere else in Asia, comparable to the US, so there's some additional cultural elements to software spending that are a long story to tap into.
And, in your life, you might know 1 person who (1) has spent money (2) in Genshin Impact, Hearthstone, or a Supercell title, and (3) is above the age of 25. There's something weirdly idiosyncratic about Roblox; and then, something about the off-brand-studios-you've-never-heard-of games. 11 year olds and Monopoly Go players, they are somehow bringing those titles to the top of the App Store.
If iOS had a similar tiny marketshare relative to Android as macOS does relative to PCs, nobody would maintain free to play games for it. Those games are monetized by whales and advertising, including cross-promo, which are scale plays. There are no "small" free to play games.
It's a totally different audience. iOS has both audiences, but the people who literally monetize in F2P are smaller in size than pay-to-players, even if they produce greater revenue overall. The pay-to-players are the audience I am talking about, because I'm trying to say that that's whose left in small platforms, and macOS has a lot more of them than whales.
An illuminating example would be that the Epic Game Store has Fortnite. And yet. Who cares about the Epic Game Store? Epic has so many incentives - it practically buys all the sales of finished games up front, to give them away to its users for free. But that's actually kind of the opposite of what they should be doing for a healthy ecosystem.
Fortnite monetizes free to play users better than anything else on EGS, so you can't make a huge F2P game on it. And by the way, Valve has CS2, DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2, #1 #2 and #8 on the charts that have only 2 other F2P games on it.
On the one hand, the top of the app store is free to play experiences - apps like Spotify and Tinder, games like Monopoly Go.
There are places where "nobody" (close to 0%) pay for Spotify subscriptions (representative of all subscriptions), like Japan, even though the iPhone is more popular there than anywhere else in Asia, comparable to the US, so there's some additional cultural elements to software spending that are a long story to tap into.
And, in your life, you might know 1 person who (1) has spent money (2) in Genshin Impact, Hearthstone, or a Supercell title, and (3) is above the age of 25. There's something weirdly idiosyncratic about Roblox; and then, something about the off-brand-studios-you've-never-heard-of games. 11 year olds and Monopoly Go players, they are somehow bringing those titles to the top of the App Store.
If iOS had a similar tiny marketshare relative to Android as macOS does relative to PCs, nobody would maintain free to play games for it. Those games are monetized by whales and advertising, including cross-promo, which are scale plays. There are no "small" free to play games.
It's a totally different audience. iOS has both audiences, but the people who literally monetize in F2P are smaller in size than pay-to-players, even if they produce greater revenue overall. The pay-to-players are the audience I am talking about, because I'm trying to say that that's whose left in small platforms, and macOS has a lot more of them than whales.
An illuminating example would be that the Epic Game Store has Fortnite. And yet. Who cares about the Epic Game Store? Epic has so many incentives - it practically buys all the sales of finished games up front, to give them away to its users for free. But that's actually kind of the opposite of what they should be doing for a healthy ecosystem.
Fortnite monetizes free to play users better than anything else on EGS, so you can't make a huge F2P game on it. And by the way, Valve has CS2, DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2, #1 #2 and #8 on the charts that have only 2 other F2P games on it.