Why Developers account need money?

As a very young person, I don't have a bank account nor a credit card. So developers like me can only publish my games Via HTML5 Web (including dropbox, google drive) , Via NodeWebkit (Desktop , Mac etc...) And firefox market place.

As to others, I tried to export to them but every time they need a developer account fee including lot of known marketplaces like: ( Itune store, google place, chrome webstore, amazon appstore, tizen appstore, etc...) There are two questions:

1) Why there is a fee? It really make game developers like me struggle.

2) Can I over pass the fee without paying it and still have a developer account?

They do that to limit abuse. For example if it were free some one could create hundreds, if not thousands of accounts, and do all sorts of social engineering.

You're asking the developers to live off nothing?

You're asking the developers to live off nothing?

Lol, no he is asking why he needs to pay iOS License to submit games. Why the marketplaces require onceoff/annual fees.

Was answered above by newt: "To limit abuse"

But at 13 your goal isn't about submitting to those marketplaces. You're goal is to get good at making games, learning new things (C# or C++ etc)

You have 5 years to learn anything you want, to make tons of small games that you can put on your website as a portfolio.

You have 5 years that none of us have - you are ahead of every developer i know.

When you turn 18, you going to have a huge portfolio, a skill set, and a merchant account - 1 word: Unstoppable

Because the people who make these tools do this for a living and they cannot pay for their homes, their food and support their families if they do it for free. It was not free to make the tools. Why do car makers not give away cars for free to taxi drivers?

And .. if you start at 13 and spend 5 years making what you really want on full day. You'll most likely be good enough to get a *real JOB* .. And then you don't need to worry about some 100usd fees anymore.

(Sorry.. this is old stuff, and I know the world has changed ..)

I purchased my first own computer (Was C64 and 1541 drive) when I was 15/16. Spend summers (schooll break) doing various odd jobs (painting houses etc).. learned to code, even learned English at the side, since there were no native manuals. Couple years later I did occasional programming gigs for local university .. (basic, pascal .. )

So, learn to do things well, it may take few years but if you are talented and motivated there will be opportunity someday,

PS: To those.. who wonder.. According the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 , the price of that machine would equal 1500USD on todays money.. I do remember it was **** lot money for the day. And the Disk Drive was similarly priced, and I had to spend another summers work just to get that. It was a big investment back then, but I have never regret it.

The iOS developer fee exists for exactly the reason newt specified. $100 a year really isn't a huge amount of money, but it acts as a deterrent (mostly) for people who would seek to abuse to the app store, and for those who aren't serious about making apps. Contrast that with the Google Play store, where anyone can release an app. That place is a quagmire at times, full of misleadingly named apps that mimic genuine apps but for nefarious purposes such as password phishing.

Well.. even iOS store is full of cheap clones.. Last time I read some article over 30% of all new apps were Flappy bird clones. So, even though the 100$ fee may help a little, it ain't solving the real issue.

As someone who started making games at 8 years old, I don't want to preach that you'll be miraculously "unstoppable in life", but it always helps to have a skill! Game development is an understanding of many things that will help in life (eg: Logic, programming, and maybe even some physics and graphical knowledge).

Definitely keep at it and try submitting your games to sites like GameJolt which will help you earn money through advertising revenue (they do the advertising for you!).

Actually you can get a developer account under your parents name and name it whatever you want. I am twelve and have four apps on the windows app store so it's not impossible.

The windows dev is only $20 so not that bad. I saved enough to pay myself in a few days

Jayjay I can attest to this, Dungeon Buster has earned me $0.09 and I haven't released it yet! It's not a million dollars but it's a start!

Wrangler rich off a game you haven't release yet.

And ya, not having a bank account/credit card and having to pay ANY amount is... well... difficult. However, I recommend talking to your parents like HZGaming mentioned. They can probably help you pay a developer fee.

I think Prepaid Cards can also help too. I've never used one though.

It's called running a business. It sucks, though.

I don't think a prepaid credit card will work for Apple. They need a Name belonging to the card...