Facebook Gaming app launched on iOS platform without mini games

Social media and tech giant Facebook has come up with a new standalone Facebook Gaming app for iOS users. However, the new gaming app for iOS lacks a mini-games functionality which is available on the Android platform. The company had to remove this important feature to pass Apple’s strict App Store approval policies.

Apple was not allowing Facebook to launch the app with its mini-games feature citing its App Store guideline 4.7. Apple argued that the main purpose of the app in question is playing games rather than watching gameplay videos from streamers.

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Facebook to continue building its gaming community

Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg recently released a statement via email and said the company had to compromise on the feature and completely remove the functionality from the standalone Facebook Gaming app to be able to get Apple's approval. She also stated that Facebook is looking to build a gaming community for over 380 million users who play games on the social networking platform every month, regardless of whether Apple allows the functionality on its standalone Facebook Gaming app or not.

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The social media giant also revealed that Apple has rejected the standalone Facebook Gaming app several times over the past couple of months. The company also said that it even went on to share the usage data from the Android version of the Facebook Gaming app which clearly displayed that 95 percent of the total in-game activity was around watching game streams, however, this wasn’t reason enough for Apple to change its decision.

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According to a Facebook spokesperson, the company had also followed Apple’s appeal process which was introduced at WWDC, however, they never received a response. In conversation with The Verge, Facebook Gaming chief Vivek Sharma revealed that the company had to remove the Instant Games feature from the primary Facebook application and Messenger for the iOS platform for a long time. He also explained that the issue surrounding Apple’s policies is an issue that is not limited to Apple, but in fact, it’s a problem that is faced by others in the gaming industry which eventually affects gamers, developers and also hinders innovation on mobile across various formats.

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Image credits: Facebook