Apple gave green light to NFT in-app purchases for software listed on the App Store. But there is a catch: the tech giant will charge a hefty fee, even when the startups are only facilitating the trades. The crypto community is outraged: Apple charges up to 30% fee on NFT applications, while leading marketplaces charge up to 5% for mediation. So, the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea charges a 2.5% commission on NFT sales.

According to the majority of the crypto community, Apple uses unfair market practices, taking advantage of its dominant position in the market and, in fact, being a monopolist.

“Apple must be stopped,” tweeted Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. According to Sweeney, Apple is “killing all NFT app businesses.”

As The Information reports, Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden is considering removing its app from the App Store due to high fees.

This isn't the first time Apple has come under fire for high fees on its app store. Thus, Telegram's CEO, Pavel Durov, lashed out against Apple over the company's "abusive" behavior.

"This harm goes on top of the 30% tax Apple and Google take from app developers – which, according to them, is supposed to pay for the resources needed to review apps. The regulators in the EU and elsewhere are slowly starting to look into these abusive practices. But the economic damage that has already been inflicted by Apple on the tech industry won't be undone."

However, some developers also noted the positive effect of the appearance of NFT applications in the App Store. CEO Limit Break and Web3 game designer Gabriel Leydon tweeted that the appearance of NFT games in App Store could attract billion of new users to the industry.

The point is that even with high fees Apple gives app developers a way to implement NFTs in their product and try a new business model out. Furthermore, the NFT integration supposes payments fiat to NFT.