Amid an ongoing battle between Epic Games and Apple over the issue of commission fee on Apple’s app store, news is coming in that tells that even Facebook was stopped from informing its users about the App store’s 30% cut, reports Reuters. During that rejection, Apple referred to an App store rule that prevents developers from revealing ‘irrelevant’ information to users.
Facebook had earlier shown its plans to launch a feature that would let influencers and business owners hold online events with paid entry. Apple’s app store requires in-app purchases to use the App Store’s payments system, which gives Apple a 30% cut of all purchases made. Facebook asked Apple to drop this fee to ensure that all the revenue goes to the organizer, but the Cupertino-giant rejected the request.
The social media giant had intended to include a message in the new update informing the users about the 30% cut, but it was not found on the new events feature. A similar message was to be put up on the android version of the app that read “Facebook doesn’t take a fee from this purchase”. But it wasn’t present on the Google play store version either.
Facebook states, “Now more than ever, we should have the option to help people understand where the money they intend for small businesses actually goes. Unfortunately, Apple rejected our transparency notice around their 30% tax but we are still working to make that information available inside the app experience”.
This news comes at a time when Apple is embroiled in a bitter public war with one of the largest game publishers on Earth – Epic Games. It began when Epic Games started using its own payments platform on Fortnite, a move that both Apple and Google said violated their respective developer policies. As a result, Apple and Google booted out Fortnite and Epic Games eventually filed a lawsuit.
In that ongoing case, a judge in the United States ruled that Apple can block Fortnite on its App Store but not the developer’s Unreal Engine.
