{"id":31839,"date":"2021-03-11T18:58:41","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T23:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=31839"},"modified":"2021-03-11T18:59:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T23:59:05","slug":"roblox-in-the-app-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/11\/roblox-in-the-app-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Roblox in the App Store"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2021\/the-roblox-microverse\/\">Ben Thompson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2021\/the-roblox-microverse\/\"><p>In short, Roblox isn&rsquo;t a game at all: it is world in which one of the things you can do is play games, with a persistent identity, persistent set of friends, persistent money, all disconnected from the device that you use to access the world.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[By] controlling everything Roblox can bring all of the disparate parts of gaming into one place; instead of one app for social interactions, another app for purchases, and a different app for every different game, everything is all in the same place.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s the screen you see when you launch the app, and I have to say, it looks an awful lot like an App Store! That&rsquo;s a problem because Apple states in its <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/app-store\/review\/guidelines\/\">App Store Guidelines<\/a> that &ldquo;Creating an interface for displaying third-party apps, extensions, or plug-ins similar to the App Store or as a general-interest collection&rdquo; is &ldquo;unacceptable&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>On one hand, perhaps Roblox is fine because these are not 3rd-party App Store apps, unlike, say, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/18\/technology\/apple-ios-facebook-gaming-app.html\">the rejected Facebook Gaming app<\/a>. But then again, Xbox Game Pass wants to launch 3rd-party games that run in the cloud, not on the iPhone at all, and Apple <a href=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2020\/samsung-and-google-samsung-and-microsoft-xbox-game-pass-and-ios\/\">also said no<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And, unlike xCloud, Roblox downloads the game code, which is <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/app-store\/review\/guidelines\/\">also forbidden<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/app-store\/review\/guidelines\/\"><p>2.5.2 Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, nor may they download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dhh\/status\/1369661145515253772\">David Heinemeier Hansson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dhh\/status\/1369661145515253772\"><p>Great example of Apple&rsquo;s infinite contradictions with the App Store.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/05\/microsofts-xcloud-unavailable-on-ios\/\">Microsoft&rsquo;s xCloud Unavailable on iOS<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Thompson: In short, Roblox isn&rsquo;t a game at all: it is world in which one of the things you can do is play games, with a persistent identity, persistent set of friends, persistent money, all disconnected from the device that you use to access the world. [&#8230;] [By] controlling everything Roblox can bring all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-03-11T23:58:44Z","apple_news_api_id":"c6c36914-225c-4655-a9bf-daa8ba23a612","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-03-11T23:59:08Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AxsNpFCJcRlWpv9qouiOmEg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[91,1930,31,1837,26,2043],"class_list":["post-31839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-appstore","tag-app-store-review-guidelines","tag-ios","tag-ios-14","tag-iosapp","tag-roblox"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31839"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31841,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31839\/revisions\/31841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}