My company tried transitioning app subscriptions to alternatives outside the app stores and it was not worth it. Credit card fraud was a massive issue. It got so bad the payment networks (Visa, MasterCard) threatened to ban us from their networks.
Honestly not really when compared to the alternative. Our net payout through alternatives was closer to 60%. We experienced a bot attack one month where we actually lost money due to generating massive transaction fees on bogus chargebacks.
I thought Google shifted to a flat 15% anyway (especially for small app developers). It's really a no brainer for app developers then.
On Android Google only takes their cut if you use their payment system. If an app developer wants to make their own payment system, they're allowed. Then they don't have to pay Google for in-app purchasing. Of course making their own, is far more complicated than simply dropping in Google's.
That is a pretty recent policy, from the last year or two, it's available in a limited number of countries, and it's a pilot you need to manually apply for. And you still need to pay the fee to Google, it's only reduced by 4%, so instead of 30 it's 26 / instead of 15 it's 11.
They can do that, yes, but they would have to distribute it somewhere other than the Google store. This introduces a lot of extra work replacing the license management and accepting payment and possibly other benefits that I don’t know about.
How would you download updates? Or even get updates notification? Who would support the infrastructure to download the app?
For 8$, i would simply bite the bullet. It's 27$CAD for a lifetime license damn it.