{"id":35672,"date":"2022-04-25T17:28:02","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T21:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=35672"},"modified":"2022-05-07T22:15:24","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T02:15:24","slug":"app-store-removing-old-apps-that-still-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/25\/app-store-removing-old-apps-that-still-work\/","title":{"rendered":"App Store Removing Old Apps That Still Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

José Adorno<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Apple has been sending some developers an email titled ”App Improvement Notice,” warning that the company will remove from the App Store apps that haven’t been ”updated in a significant amount of time.”<\/p>

As first reported by The Verge<\/a><\/em>, developers have been complaining over social media about this new policy, as this could be harmful for indie and game developers. One of them, Twitter user Protopop Games<\/a>, shared a screenshot of the email sent by Apple[…]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their Motivoto<\/a> app was last updated about two years ago, so it’s not that<\/em> old.<\/p>\n\n

Protopop Games<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I’m sitting here on a Friday night, working myself to to bone after my day job, trying my best to scrape a living from my indie games, trying to keep up with Apple, Google, Unity, Xcode, MacOS changes that happen so fast my head spins while performing worse on older devices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Kosta Eleftheriou<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Meanwhile, some of Apple’s own apps haven’t been updated for much longer than that.<\/p>\n

Rules for thee, but not for me!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Kosta Eleftheriou<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Apple also removed a version of my FlickType Keyboard that catered specifically to the visually impaired community, because I hadn’t updated it in 2 years.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, games like Pocket God have not been updated by the developers for 7 years now[…]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The constant removal of older games from the App Store is just another bridge burned with game developers, who are far less invested in or tied to Apple’s platforms than app devs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Harry McCracken<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The notion that all software will always be improved by changes has never been true. Apple is happy to sell music and movies that haven’t changed in decades!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Mark Hughes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Note, currently all<\/em> my old apps<\/a> like Perilar, DungeonDice, etc. are off the store. They all still work. Apple wants me to pay $100 extortion, recompile a bunch of old code that maybe takes minutes, maybe hours or days of catching up to “modern” APIs, before I can resubmit.<\/p>\n

And once they start requiring Monterey instead of Big Sur, I have to buy new hardware to even do that, my iMac just misses the deadline for support (but they still give me a notification a couple times a month to “upgrade” to Monterey, so smart & classy).<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I have no problem with Apple’s 30% cut[…] But every other part of the App Store policy is so noxious, all that’s left are shovelware predatory gacha games from China, “social” (masturbatory pictures of yourself) network garbage, and AAA studio teaser games, but not the real games. And now they’re just gonna make it impossible to get anything from the good era.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Dave Sapien<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

This has happened to me also (indie game dev) a few years ago.\nThe number is about 20 or so games that have been removed by Apple because they hadn’t been updated in two years. The worked perfectly fine on all the new hardware\/software and even work today.<\/p>\n

On top of that, I know that there is another 30 or so apps I was involved in with clients that have also been removed.<\/p>\n

These weren’t the biggest apps\/games in the world, but they were all high quality finished products that had nothing wrong with them. Its just the cost of re-publishing each one out-weighed the return, so I didn’t have much of a choice sadly. I do have plans to re-publish some of them, however they have to take a back seat for current work.<\/p>\n

All that to say, I have a large part of my portfolio of work that is no longer available to the public, which just sucks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick<\/a> Lockwood<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I’ve had several replies from people who say their apps were removed despite not using any tracking of any kinds, so I guess that isn’t it.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The biggest single issue with Apple’s behavior towards developers is the lack of communication. Would it really inconvenience them to disclose the reasons for these decisions, instead of making proclamations from an ivory tower and leaving us all to speculate about the rationale?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Frank Reiff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Apple just wants everything to be built on their latest SDKs. If that means that millions of developers need to spend a few hours re-building working apps.. it’s a price Apple is willing to pay.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, the development organization simply doesn’t want to support anything but the latest SDK. Less work. Fewer bugs. Less variability. Good for them, somewhat bad for users, a huge pain for devs.. but that’s the hierarchy of needs: Apple, users, devs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Thomas Fuchs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Games for 40-year old platforms are easily playable today.<\/p>\n

Games released 8 years ago on iOS? Lost forever.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n