Facebook Joins War Against Apple's App Store Commission

Apple‘s 30 percent app store commission attracted a lot of attention in the previous week.

Facebook recently launched a paid event service — Live Events — to create, promote, and host paid events. The feature is a response to the pandemic, which forced the cancellation of in-person gatherings.

To support struggling businesses, Facebook said it wouldn’t collect any fees on those online events for at least a year. In other words, companies can keep 100 percent of the payment made on the web and Android.

But that won’t be the case on iOS, according to Facebook.

Facebook vice president, Fidji Simo explained the reason in a blog post:

“We asked Apple to reduce its 30 percent App Store tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and SMBs will only be paid 70 percent of their hard-earned revenue.”

The post came just about 24 hours after Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store.

Epic Games Challenges Apple’s App Store Commission

Last week, Epic released the latest version of Fortnite, which lets player transactions bypass Apple’s App Store. With that, the iPhone makers will be unable to claim its typical app store commission.

Shortly after the update, Apple kicked Fortnite out of its app store, and Epic filed an antitrust complaint.

The game-maker requested that a federal judge should order Apple to stop its “anti-competitive conduct.” It also asked the court to invalidate the rule requiring app developers to pay 30 percent of transactions to Apple.

Epic emphasized that it wasn’t seeking favorable treatment. Instead, the game company was simply asking the court to order Apple to change its commission structure for all developers.

On the other hand, Apple claims that it pulled Fortnite from the App Store for violating its guidelines.

The Cupertino-based company wrote:

“Epic Games took the unfortunate step of violating the App Store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users.”

Be that as it may, other companies are now challenging Apple’s right to a large cut of their sales. These include the music service Spotify — and, more recently, Facebook.