Are Facebook's costs driving away developers?

"Companies with aspirations to be larger publishers -- Kabam, Kixeye, even Zynga -- are moving aggressively off the Facebook platform to mobile and the open Web. Publishers aren't convinced that the costs of being on Facebook are worth it."

- Former EA Mobile head and venture investor Mitch Lasky argues that the high costs of player acquisition on Facebook are driving away some of the biggest publishers and developers from the platform. Lasky believes Facebook is still a viable platform for independent studios, but he told the Los Angeles Times that major companies like Crowdstar dislike spending so much money on ads to acquire players for their free-to-play titles. Add those marketing expenses to the 30 percent toll Facebook takes from all in-game sales generated through its platform, and developers can potentially lose half of their revenues to these costs. Over the last year, many major Facebook developers have sought to diversify their offerings by launching their own platforms separate from the site, or focusing more on bringing their games to mobile devices. Are these costs really to blame for developers placing more emphasis on non-Facebook platforms? And have Facebook's recent efforts to drive game discovery had any affect on alleviating those player acquisition costs?