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back to article Facebook dev rules tweaked after US antitrust complaint

Facebook has updated its developer terms of service following an antitrust complaint to the Federal Trade Commission. The company now lets Facebook-game developers charge a lower price for virtual goods when their game runs on other platforms, such as MySpace, Yahoo!, or another website. Previously, Facebook's terms of service …

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  1. Jay 3
    FAIL

    Facebook games?

    WTF is facebook and who would want to play games there?

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    1. Graham Marsden
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      Trollface

      @Facebook games

      There's a very good (and free) online version of Scrabble on there :-)

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  2. Lyle Dietz
    Trollface

    Nice troll

    Still far from excellent though.

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  3. Turk3y
    WTF?

    is that not the norm?

    Does XBOX Live with its credits also run on the same premise, and I bet MS take 30% from the devs also, and Itunes may be based around currency but you have to use it and again let the provider take their 30% skim.... how is it unfair for smaller developers on Facebook, but OK for others?

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  4. Tom 13

    Gavin Clarke needs to learn to read, Facebook needs more competent lawyers.

    I followed the link to the old terms of use and it did not "required that the same prices be charged on competing platforms." It required that developers not charge "lower" prices elsewhere.

    Such requirements are common in US contract law as a means of guaranteeing a competitive price for the sales agent, and are routinely upheld. The rest of the complaint is in no way related to that clause. The complaint is problematic on almost all fronts. First off, despite their name, Consumer Watchdog has no standing to file the complaint, so it could be summarily dismissed. Secondly, Facebook do not have a monopoly position if social networking. Lot of other sites exist and are frequently used.

    Furthermore, the anti-trust suit against MS might have used that clause, but the basis for the claim was legal documents covered by discovery which showed MS had engaged in actual anti-competitive practices: If you manufactured PCs and installed DOS and/or Windows on them, you all computers you manufactured were required to have DOS and/or Windows installed on them. That is a far cry from 'you can't give someone else a better deal than you give us.'

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