{"id":44382,"date":"2024-08-07T16:09:12","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T20:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44382"},"modified":"2024-08-13T10:00:45","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T14:00:45","slug":"inside-apple-arcade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/07\/inside-apple-arcade\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Apple Arcade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mobilegamer.biz\/inside-apple-arcade-again-late-payments-stonewalled-studios-terrible-tech-support-and-vision-pro-woes\/\">Neil Long<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mobilegamer.biz\/inside-apple-arcade-again-late-payments-stonewalled-studios-terrible-tech-support-and-vision-pro-woes\/\"><ul><li>Some studios now wait up to six months to get paid, which almost put one indie dev out of business<\/li><li>The Apple Arcade team do not respond to routine emails for weeks or even months, if they respond at all<\/li><li>One developer who had semi-regular meetings with the tech giant said that &ldquo;half the Apple team won&rsquo;t turn up and when they do they have no idea what&rsquo;s going on and can&rsquo;t answer our questions&rdquo;<\/li><li>Apple&rsquo;s tech support was also described as &ldquo;miserable&rdquo; and &ldquo;the worst I have seen anywhere&rdquo;<\/li><li>Vision Pro struggles to run &ldquo;complex games&rdquo; and developing for it is &ldquo;like going back in time 10 years&rdquo; due to the lack of tech support<\/li><li>Apple engineers are &ldquo;unable to offer any insights&rdquo; into how Vision Pro&rsquo;s hardware or software works, or &ldquo;how essential middleware is meant to work with it&rdquo;<\/li><li>Discoverability on Arcade is so poor that one person said it was like their game &ldquo;was in a morgue&rdquo;<\/li><\/ul><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/24\/07\/31\/apple-arcade-developers-say-working-with-apple-is-like-being-in-an-abusive-relationship\">Amber Neely<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/24\/07\/31\/apple-arcade-developers-say-working-with-apple-is-like-being-in-an-abusive-relationship\"><p>One particularly frustrated developer spoke out against Apple Arcade, saying, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s like an abusive relationship where the abused stays in the relationship hoping the other partner will change and become the person you know they could be.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/24\/04\/23\/apple-arcade-is-about-fun-not-profit-says-exec-in-charge\">In April,<\/a> Apple executive Alex Rofman said Apple Arcade was not set up to make the company money, but also insisted that game developers were getting fairly compensated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2024\/08\/01\/apple-arcade-frustrations-persist-for-developers\/\">Hartley Charlton<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2024\/08\/01\/apple-arcade-frustrations-persist-for-developers\/\"><p>Developers also pointed out issues with quality assurance and updates, claiming that a prolonged discussion with Apple over a single update cost their team two months of work. &ldquo;Submitting updates is so painful our developers started trying to avoid it,&rdquo; they said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@stroughtonsmith\/112887207989092682\">Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@stroughtonsmith\/112887207989092682\">\n<p>Absolutely brutal. This is a microcosm of Apple&rsquo;s developer relations in the modern era.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/take.surf\/2024\/07\/31\/appleinsider-apple-arcade-developers-say-working-with-apple-is-like-being-in-an-abusive-relationship\">Jesper<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/take.surf\/2024\/07\/31\/appleinsider-apple-arcade-developers-say-working-with-apple-is-like-being-in-an-abusive-relationship\"><p>Apple <em>does not get games<\/em>. Apple <em>does not respect developers<\/em>. Apple ships a dictionary defining the word &ldquo;symbiosis&rdquo;, but chances are the many Apple employees who understand it are not in a position to effect it.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>These reports are particularly interesting, since the perennial defense of app store-encumbered platforms are to refer to them as game consoles but for apps. Apple Arcade games are headliners flying closer to the Apple brand than other games; they should be getting ultra deluxe treatment compared to App Store apps, and yet it doesn&rsquo;t measure up to the levels delivered by game consoles or independent storefronts like Steam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macstories.net\/linked\/developers-claim-apple-arcade-is-directionless\/\">John Voorhees<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macstories.net\/linked\/developers-claim-apple-arcade-is-directionless\/\"><p>It&rsquo;s important to take the complaints of unnamed sources with a grain of salt. However, it&rsquo;s impossible to look at what&rsquo;s going on with Arcade and <a href=\"https:\/\/mobilegamer.biz\/under-2000-people-have-paid-to-play-resident-evil-7-on-ios-estimates-say\/\">App Store gaming in general<\/a> &#x2013; which <a href=\"https:\/\/wavelengths.online\">Brendon<\/a> and I <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/npc-next-portable-console\/id1749770019?i=1000663809552\">discussed on NPC: Next Portable Console<\/a> this week &#x2013; and not conclude that Apple needs to shake up its approach to videogames.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.macstories.net\/@viticci\/112887099328195182\">Federico Viticci<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.macstories.net\/@viticci\/112887099328195182\"><p>I never thought I&rsquo;d say that Netflix understands videogames more than Apple ever did, yet here we are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/26\/apple-arcades-uncertain-future\/\">Apple Arcade&rsquo;s Uncertain Future<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/04\/apples-mac-gaming-push\/\">Apple&rsquo;s Mac Gaming Push<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/04\/the-trouble-with-mac-gaming\/\">The Trouble With Mac Gaming<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/01\/canceling-apple-arcade-games\/\">Canceling Apple Arcade Games<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/25\/the-business-side-of-apple-arcade\/\">The Business Side of Apple Arcade<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/25\/apple-arcade\/\">Apple Arcade<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"inside-apple-arcade-update-2024-08-13\">Update (2024-08-13): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=41121789\">Hacker<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=41210668\">News<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neil Long: Some studios now wait up to six months to get paid, which almost put one indie dev out of businessThe Apple Arcade team do not respond to routine emails for weeks or even months, if they respond at allOne developer who had semi-regular meetings with the tech giant said that &ldquo;half the Apple [&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":"2024-08-07T20:09:14Z","apple_news_api_id":"c5ca7567-a8e3-4088-bf48-4fb78c0e5bce","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-08-13T14:00:47Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Axcp1Z6jjQIi_SE-3jA5bzg","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":[91,1787,2402,101,418,31,2321,26,30,32,39,2385,2403,2601],"class_list":["post-44382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-appstore","tag-apple-arcade","tag-apple-vision-pro","tag-business","tag-game","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-iosapp","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macappstore","tag-macos-14-sonoma","tag-visionos","tag-visionos-1"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44382","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=44382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44459,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44382\/revisions\/44459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}