Shortly after Epic decided to start a fight against Apple and the 30% tax on sales from the App Store and Facebook came out in public to criticize these practices. The company said at the time that Apple refuses to give up that commission even for virtual event transactions from the social networking application that Facebook does not want to monetize, all revenues going directly to the organizing companies. At the time, Facebook said it would place a message below the payment button stating that Apple was charging the transaction. But it seems that update has never reached the App Store.
The conflict between Facebook and Apple concerns the transaction fees on the platform
Facebook told Reuters that Apple has blocked an update to its iOS app. It seems that the reason for this update was rejected is the fact that under the payment button is included the information that “Apple takes a commission from this payment”. And in Apple’s view, this is “irrelevant” information that violates the App Store regulations, which states that you are not allowed to display such information to users.
The update was eventually released in a modified form, which no longer included the reference to Apple’s “fee”. It seems that Google had a similar reaction, as the message that “Facebook does not charge a commission for this transaction” does not appear under the transaction button in the Android application, as was originally announced.
Most likely, however, Facebook will not take direct action as Epic Games did. The application is probably used by most iOS users around the world, being one of the most popular on the Apple platform. Thus, violating the regulation to cause actions by Apple could create problems for many people, including those who use Facebook for business purposes, who could lose access to features in the application.
However, more and more app developers are starting to protest against app store fees. Probably many of them rely on the lawsuits that Epic has filed against Google and Apple, to decide whether or not it is worth taking similar actions.
Juana loves to cover the tech and gaming industry, she always stays on the first row of CES conference and reports live from there.
