Facebook has released its Gaming app on iOS, but it sure isn’t happy about it. As a matter of fact, the app has no games at all on iPhones and iPads. That’s because Apple wouldn’t approve the app with any games, for some of the same reasons that it has denied approval to Google Stadia and Microsoft’s xCloud, among other services.
“Unfortunately, we had to remove gameplay functionality entirely in order to get Apple’s approval on the standalone Facebook Gaming app — meaning iOS users have an inferior experience to those using Android,” Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg said in a statement.
The company was planning to launch the iOS app at the same time as the Andriod app in April. However, Apple rejected it over and over again for going against its Apple Store rule on third-party software. That rule states that HTML5 games are allowed as long as “code distribution isn’t the primary purpose of the app.”
Facebook countered that around 95%of app activity on Android is from hosting and watching game streams, so gaming itself isn’t the primary aim of the app. It appealed the rejections, but Apple disregarded them, so Facebook elected to launch the app anyway while informing users what was going on.
With Facebooks’s Gaming app, some major players are fighting Apple’s strict store policies over gaming. Microsoft and Google were forced to delay or compromise on their XCloud and Stadia apps, and NVIDIA’s GeForce Now service has yet to launch on iOS, either. A reckoning could come soon, though, one way or the other.
TECH NEWS>>>>Uber Is Getting Its Biggest Opponent In UK
