An Update on Facebook Credits and In-Game Offers

As announced in January, we will require social game developers on the Facebook canvas platform to process all payments through Facebook Credits starting July 1.

While we are requiring social game developers to use Facebook Credits as their payments platform, developers can still offer their own in-game currencies. Some developers are using Facebook Credits as their sole in-game currency, while others are using credits as the payment method for their own in-game currencies. To learn more about implementation options and integration best practices, we introduced the Facebook Credits Integration Guide as a resource to assist in the transition to Facebook Credits.

Today we wanted to clarify how applications can reward users with virtual currency and virtual goods.

Under our terms effective July 1, applications can reward their users in the following ways:

• Giving users virtual currency or virtual goods in exchange for them performing an action that does not involve a third party, such as watching an ad for a game by the same developer or installing another app offered by the same developer.
• Giving users virtual goods when they take an action involving a third party, as long as the user is not required to share personally identifiable information. Examples include watching a video, playing a mini-game or taking a poll.
• Giving users virtual currency or virtual goods via Facebook’s approved offer partners.

To ensure the best user experience, developers may not offer rewards in the following instances:

• Giving users virtual currency for any action that involves a third party, such as watching a 30-second video ad or signing up for a subscription. This feature is available through Facebook’s approved offer partners.
• Giving users virtual currency or virtual goods for actions that involve them sharing personally identifiable information with a third party, or downloading an app from a third party.

More details on our approach towards offers can be found here. To learn more or follow the latest news on Facebook Credits, visit http://developers.facebook.com/credits or http://www.facebook.com/FacebookCredits.