The other day, I discovered that you need to own an Apple device before you can submit a Facebook Instant Game for review. And if that wasn’t enough – you also need a paid developer account.
Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines.
While reading the Facebook Instant Game FAQ section, I came across the following:
During submission for Instant Game app review, you must provide an Apple Developer team ID in accordance with Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines 4.7. This enables distribution of your game on iOS. Using an invalid or expired Developer team ID may lead to your game being removed.
“OK, fair enough”, I thought, before heading over to the Apple Developer section to register for an account.
Company email address.
Apple developer’s section does not allow you to register with a personal email address. It must be a company email address. This means that Gmail accounts, etc, will be rejected.
It’s not the end of the world, but it’s still a bit annoying to those of us who like to use our personal email addresses for everything.
Where is the Apple Developer team ID?
After registering and confirming my company’s email address, I was met with a blank dashboard. I could not find any reference to a team ID or anything like that.
Old Stack Overflow questions did not help. This is because Apple seems to have a bad habit of moving this team ID around.
Eventually, I discovered that you won’t be given a team ID until you enroll in the Apple Developer Program. At the time of writing, a link to the Apple Developer Program was located at the bottom of the main developer dashboard.
Apple Developer Program.
During the enrollment process, Apple forces you to enable “Two-factor Authentication” on your account. Unfortunately, this “Two-factor Authentication” feature is only available on a Mac or an iPhone. If you use a Windows PC or an Android, you’re out of luck:
Two-factor authentication is available to iCloud and iTunes users with at least one device that’s using the latest iOS or macOS.
Even if you enable SMS as a “Two-Step Verification”, that is still not enough:
Your Apple ID currently has two-step verification turned on, but two-factor authentication is required.
Bizarre.
Essentially, this means that you will need to own an Apple device before you can submit a Facebook Instant Game for review. Then, after you buy that device and enable two-factor authentication, you have to pay 99 USD per year for the Apple Developer Program.
Seems pretty exploitative from Apple.