Delta 1.6 Rejected From the App Store

Zac Hall:

We knew the retro game emulator app Delta was popular, but over 10 million users on iPhone alone? That’s the stat that the team behind Delta shared today alongside the latest news about availability on iPad.

[…]

Delta for iPad comes with features exclusive to iPadOS, including support for Handoff from iPhone, opening multiple Delta windows, and even playing Delta in Stage Manager or in Split View. That’s in addition to each console skin being optimized for the iPad and full-screen game support.

Riley Testut:

lol Apple rejected it

John Voorhees (Mastodon):

I’ve had a chance to try the new Delta 1.6 iPad features and they’re great, so it was disappointing to see that the app has been rejected by App Review. According to the AltStore Mastodon account, the reason was that the app included a link to the developers’ Patreon page, even though that link appeared in prior versions of the app. The Patreon link has been removed and the app resubmitted, so hopefully the update will be available worldwide soon.

Riley Testut:

Some positive news! App Review just called — tl;dr we are allowed to include Patreon benefits (e.g. alternate app icons), there are just some changes we need to make first

Rather than delay 1.6 any more though, we’ve removed all Patreon functionality for now and resubmitted. Plan is to add it back in an update soon once we get 1.6 out the door (hopefully soon)🤞

It was also rejected for “4.3.0: Design Spam.”

Stuart McHattie:

it’s their get out clause for “actually we just don’t want to approve your app any more”. See the review guidelines and in particular (b). So I guess what they’re saying is that they wanted emulators, but they’ve had their fill.

Which is a dumb reason for an update. I could understand this reason for rejection on a brand new app.

Craig Grannell:

Rejecting Delta – DELTA! – for “spam” is, even by Apple standards, taking the piss. Then again, this is one of those opaque rules that often just means Apple doesn’t want the app. MAME4iOS has been tangled in this net for some time now (although I suspect will now fall foul of Apple gradually deciding to punt emulators that aren’t specifically for game consoles, despite having approved a bunch for home micros; still, arcade boards were an unknown).

Craig Grannell:

Emulation state of play on iOS:

• A few stars (eg Delta & PPSSPP)
• A cut-back RetroArch (and no front-ends)
• The odd fun curio (eg ZX81)
• Loads of crap (me-too NES; terrible C64)
• Presumably intentionally opaque Apple rules that would be simple to clarify, but Apple doesn’t want to because it never wanted emulators on the store and appeared to only approve Delta to blunt AltStore, and this also means many good devs won’t bother and Android remains way better for emulation

[…]

So three months in and, as predicted by me and others, emulation on iOS is an incoherent mess. Which probably suits Apple just fine but it further dents the platform’s credibility with a very noisy contingent of gamers and makes it look inferior compared to Android. And Apple’s ridiculous review stance means a lot of great devs won’t bother. Why would they? Why spend months polishing an emulator only for Apple to arbitrarily decide to reject it?

Joe Rosensteel:

We need some people who can manage from the bottom up. Who can talk to developers directly about App Store issues. Whose responsibilities are the interrelated aspects of customer experience, not just the UX of a single product.

Decades ago, Apple changed its relationship with the community with Apple Evangelists. Maybe it’s time to do so again with a team of Apple Ombudspeople?

[…]

Apple famously isn’t aligned around product lines, which is part of the whole “secret sauce” of Apple product development. Except it sometimes seems that nobody is asking the big questions about how Apple’s products interoperate.

[…]

It’s not the job of the security boffins to worry about balancing security with user experience. They’re thinking about making sure the user is safe, and that’s a fine role. But it has to be counterbalanced by larger considerations, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone is empowered to do that right now.

I like the general idea. But two of his examples are Epic and emulators, and I think those are cases where the people at the top were well in the loop. If they had wanted these submissions to go smoothly they would have. Ombudspeople can be great at surfacing issues, but I don’t see how they get leadership to fundamentally change its mind about major issues.

Previously:

• Epic Games Store Temporarily Allowed
• Epic Games Store Blocked via Notarization
• UTM Blocked Outside App Store via Notarization
• iOS Retro Console Game Emulators
• Delta’s 10-Year Journey to the Top of the App Store
• Delta Emulator in the App Store
• Allowing iOS Game Emulators and Mini Apps

Update (2024-07-15): AltStore:

Just in time for the weekend — Delta 1.6 has been approved and is now available in the App Store!

Craig Grannell:

Good grief, Apple. Glad you got to the right result but why does it so often require devs to fight against bullshit rules and then hope someone might call and that said person can provide clear advice? (Because that doesn’t always happen.)

Tim Hardwick:

With iPad support in v1.6, users can now take full advantage of the device’s larger display and play in fullscreen. There are new controller skins designed specifically for iPad, and the app supports multiple windows in Stage Manager and Split View, with games able to optionally pause when switching windows. The iPad version also supports external game controllers, and the developer Riley Testut says emulated games “hand off” seamlessly between iPhone and iPad, allowing gamers to continue playing where they left off.

Testut says the need for BIOS files has now been eliminated, streamlining the setup process. Users should also notice a considerable improvement in the performance of DS games.

AltStore App Store App Store Rejection Delta Emulator Emulator iOS iOS 17 iPadOS iPadOS 17 Patreon

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