How often have you come across a game where the developers offer you in-game rewards if you were to go to its Facebook page and “Like” it? We’re sure more often than you’d like to think. It is understandable why developers do this – after all it helps their Facebook page grow, which in turns helps them to reach out to more gamers for status updates, new product launches, and so on.
However it seems that Facebook has had enough of these artificial growths and have made changes of its Platform Policies. One of the changes addresses the issue we mentioned above, where developers provide gamers with incentives as long as they Like their Facebook page. According to the new policy, “You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page.”
Facebook has given developers until the 5th of November 2014 to make the changes in their app. If you’re wondering why this move sounds familiar, it is because a couple of months ago, Apple instituted something similar themselves. Apple had begun cracking down on apps that incentivized social sharing/video watching.
While this is probably bad news for developers who are looking for ways to grow or earn money, at the end of the day it should benefit users and prevent developers from trying to game Facebook’s algorithms, but what do you guys think? Is this move fair to developers?