Apple informs developers upfront that consistent app updates are a part of the agreement with regard to doing business on the App Store.
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While the enforcement may be uneven or sporadic, it should not be a total surprise. It’s possible the developers received a warning, too. (It’s not clear that Pocket God would be immune from a sweep, however - its Twitter account is no longer active and its website has shut down. He said a version of its keyboard app designed for visually impaired users was removed from the App Store for being out of date, but the game Pocket God remains online even though it hasn’t been updated for seven years. IOS developer and App Store critic Kosta Eleftheriou also suggested the policy may be unevenly applied.
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Games can exist as completed objects! These free projects aren’t suitable for updates or a live service model, they’re finished artworks from years ago. is removing a few of my old games b/c they have “not been updated in a significant amount of time” He says these sorts of anti-developer policies are why he’s stopped developing for the App Store.Īnother developer, Simen Gjermundsen, mirrored that complaint on Twitter, noting also his kids’ game, Motivoto, is still “fully functional” and calls the policy an “unfair barrier to indie devs.” Meanwhile, he points out that another app of his has more downloads but didn’t get a similar warning notice. The app would require recoding to meet Apple’s demand, and Barker admits he hasn’t kept up with Swift. He admits the app isn’t “setting the world on fire,” but it works and is differentiated from other timer apps on the market. And some of the apps and games getting caught up in the purge are still usable and playable, they argue.Īccording to one developer, Simon Barker, his app Tap Timer, now up for deletion, doesn’t get any crash reports and still sees downloads. They instead view their app as a completed project that doesn’t necessarily need to be continually updated, similar to a work of art. That’s a poor end-user experience, and ultimately one Apple wants to avoid.īut the complaints from the impacted developers indicate that an app’s functionality is not always an issue. Those apps may also be targeting deprecated APIs, which could make them non-functional. Many apps on the App Store don’t meet these requirements after developers abandon them. When consumers seek out apps and games to download, they want to be sure they’re installing something that actually functions, that’s been optimized to fit their device’s screen and that’s up-to-date with any recent security enhancements. Typically, these App Store sweeps are designed with the needs of consumers in mind, not necessarily developers. Apple did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.Īpple has a history of cleaning up its App Store at regular intervals.
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It only informed them that if their apps had not been updated for a “significant amount of time,” they would be removed. Again, these apps had at least 10,000 installs in 2022.Īpple, unfortunately, has not been precise in its communication with developers. Sensor Tower said that if turned its analysis to look at apps that were last updated before September 2020 (when iOS 14 was released), it found the number of apps that could face removal would grow to at least 7,335. That indicates the true number of impacted apps could be even higher. But based on anecdotal developer reports, some had said their apps were updated more recently, but they had still received a warning notice from Apple.
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Over the past few days, several iOS developers took to social media to report receiving notices from Apple that their older apps will be removed from sale within 30 days if no updates were submitted.Īfter Sensor Tower’s analysis of apps that had at least 10,000 installs in 2022, it found some 2,966 apps and games could face removal during Apple’s latest purge, as they were last updated before or during 2018. The news that Apple is doing another cleanup of its App Store emerged this weekend, shortly after Google’s recent announcement that its Play Store will begin to block downloads for outdated apps. A new estimate from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower predicts that nearly 3,000 semi-active apps, if not more, could be pulled from the App Store in the latest sweep designed to remove apps that are no longer being updated by their developers.