After a little over four months on the job, Google's "game developer advocate" is no longer with the company. The development follows his discussion at GDC-Europe of Google's revenue plans for games sold over its Chrome Web Store
Mark DeLoura, a veteran with deep ties to the industry, joined Google in early April; on his personal blog he's just posted news that he left Google effective Monday.
Casual games trendspotter GameZebo noticed his departure and its timing next to his GDC-Europe presentation, in which DeLoura said Google would be asking only for a 5 percent cut of sales of games over its Chrome Web Store, a marketplace that seeks to deliver games over web browsers (with additional capability under Google's Chrome browser) and is expected to compete with Apple and Facebook in the casual games market. Facebook and Apple typically take a 30 percent cut.
Update: While Gamezebo speculates DeLoura may have gone off message about Google's revenue model, the fact remains that 5 percent of each transaction, plus a 30 cent per-transaction fee, is what Google has told developers it will charge. The least a developer may charge for a Chrome Web Store app is $1.99.
DeLoura, on his blog, says only that Google "was not the perfect fit for me," but goes on to praise Google's development toolset and the vision behind Chrome games and apps. "I'm looking forward to the day where we see more games running in the cloud, like Farmville and World of Warcraft do now, and it is easy for developers to create clients on multiple platforms so I can bring my game with me no matter where I am," he wrote.