The digital service market is vast and constantly expanding. In the digital service market, platforms such as Netflix, Steam, etc. often seek to enter into exclusivity deals with service providers or developers in order to get exclusive access rights to their digital services in the hopes that offering exclusive access to a digital product will entice new consumers to use their platform and thus generate increased profits. In this study we focus on this phenomenon in the mobile gaming market. For example, the game developer Electronic Arts agreed to offer Apple iOS a 4-month exclusive deal for the well-known mobile game Plants vs. Zombies 2. The benefits of exclusivity deals for both platforms and digital service developers are unclear and have not been studied in the extant literature. We develop an analytical model of digital service profits to examine the optimal conditions of exclusivity for platforms and digital service developers. Our result shows that platforms prefer exclusivity while developers prefer offering their product on multiple platforms. We further explore the strategies that platforms and digital service developers can employ by analyzing three simultaneous and sequential game pricing and release scenarios. We find that higher profits can be generated by whichever party determines the price of a game first. However, we also found that in the presence of a leasing fee, platforms may prefer a simultaneous pricing and release scenario to even a platform-led pricing and release scenario. We conclude with implications for research and practice and suggestions for future research.

数字服务市场广阔且不断扩大。在数字服务市场，Netflix、Steam 等平台经常寻求与服务提供商或开发商签订排他性协议，以获得对其数字服务的独家访问权，希望提供对数字产品的独家访问权吸引新消费者使用他们的平台，从而增加利润。在本研究中，我们关注移动游戏市场中的这种现象。例如，游戏开发商艺电同意向苹果 iOS 提供为期 4 个月的知名手游《植物大战僵尸 2》的独家优惠。. 排他性交易对平台和数字服务开发商的好处尚不清楚，现有文献中也没有研究过。我们开发了一个数字服务利润分析模型，以检查平台和数字服务开发商的最佳排他性条件。我们的结果表明平台更喜欢排他性，而开发人员更喜欢在多个平台上提供他们的产品。我们通过分析三个同时和顺序的游戏定价和发布场景，进一步探索平台和数字服务开发商可以采用的策略。我们发现，无论哪一方先决定游戏的价格，都可以产生更高的利润。然而，我们也发现，在有租赁费的情况下，与平台主导的定价和发布场景相比，平台可能更喜欢同步定价和发布场景。我们总结了对研究和实践的影响以及对未来研究的建议。