Santa Ragione says Apple is delisting Wheels of Aurelia 'without justification' | Hacker News Reader

Santa Ragione says Apple is delisting Wheels of Aurelia 'without justification'

gamedeveloper.com

36 pointssaubeidl26 comments

The other post[0] has a link with a more balanced take which provides what some of these app store rules are. It's curious that they don't simply add the necessary (by store policy): '"Compatibility updates" include device resolution adds, of which there have been three since the last time the game was updated.'

That is not a change to the game (or their art), simply an update that keeps the game in compliance. However, that would also mean that they now have to comply with the newer privacy policies that have been put in place since their last update, and declare what data it and any 3rd party dependancies siphons from Appstore users. IMO, it's worth considering that that would be worth causing a fuss about if one did not want to expose this information.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44574059

>We firmly believe that removing fully functional artistic works simply due to infrequent updates undermines the value and sustainability of games as cultural and artistic products. Like books, films, and music albums, video games represent complete creative works that do not inherently require continual updates beyond maintaining basic functionality

Is the Apple app store there to provide that kind of perpetual access?

A book's perpetual existence is mostly because a physical copy exists, that's not really the same, nor is anyone assuring it still exists.

I do sympathize with the issue about requiring updates and etc, I ran into that with Google recently, but I'm not sure I buy into this idea that requiring updates shouldn't happen ever because "my game is like art and art doesn't require updates".

It's a pretty sad trap to fall into. All of these games are doomed to fall out of support and never be played again if nobody maintains them. Consoles have emulators and PC games usually just keep working but what is the solution for the mobile games worth saving?

> Consoles have emulators

All of them written by hobbyists, without support from console manufacturers, isn’t it?

Is there anything that Apple does to prevent hobbyists from writing an iOS emulator? If so, do other manufacturers do better?

Nintendo does have their own emulators but only for a subset of games. Everything else is third party.

Apple probably doesn't try to prevent iOS apps from being emulated but the fact that it's a fast moving target makes it much less practical.

Why should they need maintenance? The only maintenance needed is because the OS has zero concern for backwards compatibility.

What do games need? A GL/vulkan context, audio system and user input. They really don't ask for much from the OS itself. It should be able to keep working because it's still doing the same thing. It wasn't broken because it had a bug, but it was broken because Apple decided to break it (and lots of other useful, feature-complete apps). Sometimes, something is just "finished". It shouldn't need "maintaining" to keep running.

I agree. It's not practical to expect apps/games to be maintained forever. People stop working on things. Studios shut down. It's another reason why I think macOS wouldn't work out as a good games platform.

As a customer, yes. I own iOS games that I cannot play and frankly I think that sucks.

If they provided a plausible way to sideload then they'd be on stronger grounds. It's the same as Stop Killing Games. Apple shouldn't carry the burden of hosting forever, but equally they can't just make something disappear forever.

I'm not opposed to side loading in general, but the idea that side loading would work perpetually for old code also doesn't seem possible.

I used to think this but we have DOSBox, etc.

Even if something stopped working, that doesn’t mean it can never work again.

Apple aren’t obliged to keep the platform backwards compatible as long as they let people try to run their software.

If it allows the platforms to evolve and change without endless backwards compatibility .... I wouldn't be entirely opposed to "provide some effort with an emulator" not necessarily support for it, I could get behind that idea.

Apple should commit to a support life cycle on the front end then. You are being sold this product with support for a minimum of 'x' time frame. You are not 'buying' this.

Ideally what Stop Killing Games would like is game preservation, but at minimum we need honesty/transparency about product market places. I finally know what my minimum OS lifecycle is for my Pixel phone, and I can make a comfortable purchase decision based on that.

Even Steam isn't immune to this, it simply has an good track record relative compared to most other platforms.

Apple took a ~30% cut of the sale of the product. That should calculate into it's servicing of the product. To Ross Scott's points (and many others), if you have a perpetual service but a onetime/lifetime payment, the business model will eventually not net out.

The image at the top of this article is beautiful, so I was confused why Apple would pull such an aesthetically pleasing game.

But then I searched the App Store for the game. The description still says "80% off!" from prior endless sales, the art style is pretty bad even for the 2015 copyright date, and the storyline is "I just robbed that bank" and similarly shallow storylines.

This isn't art as people would think of it, this reminds me of a run of the mill flash game from another decade.

I don't think you're talking of the same game. https://mrdavepizza.com/wheels-of-aurelia/

You think that I'm looking at the wrong thing? I'm looking at "Wheels of Aurelia" in the App store, subtitle "Interactive Italian Road Trip" and published by Santa Ragione srl

Did you take the time to download it or look at the listing vs the article?

The article itself has a large image and no screenshots of the app. The app looks nothing like the image in the article, though.

Art doesn't have to be good. It's a visual novel and there's plenty of dialogue that attempts to have meaningful themes (regardless of whether it succeeds). I'm not sure why it shouldn't be considered art.

Did you look at the App Store listing, or download and try the free app? It's surprisingly bad. I was ready to comment against this decision until I looked at it myself.

No, I simply looked at a few videos of people playing it. Note that I'm not saying it's a good game, just that being a bad game doesn't imply it's not art.

The developer -sorry, studio- is the one claiming this is art. I was curious, looked, and saw nothing remotely resembling art.

I encourage you to review the App Store listing since that is what is being removed. The description on this free app still shows "80% off limited time sale!" on this art (which is now free, so the description makes no sense).

I think this is much ado about nothing. If you cared about the app, make it something people want. Nobody wants a game from 2015 with bad graphics and lackluster storyline.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

So why are you telling Apple (the 'beholder' in this case) that they're wrong? Your statement means everyone's opinion about art is valid, which means even this comment is art™

Apple isn't the beholder here. Users are.

I think you're just using an overly narrow definition of art that excludes things you don't find aesthetically pleasing. I'm assuming you also wouldn't find Rauschenberg's white paintings (https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/galleries/series/...) or Picasso's various animal drawings (https://www.pablopicasso.net/images/Camel%20Pablo%20Picasso....) to be art?

Would you care to venture a definition of art?

Because Apple isn't a person? It's a business, they shouldn't impede the expression of speech unless they desire for the world to know them as prudes and socially-contrived autists.

You say that as if some of the most popular game franchises aren't direct continuations of flash games.

Flash was readily available, low cost (before creative cloud), had few to no platform specific issues. Basically- the easiest possible entry for young devs and game devs.

Sorry, are you defending that Flash should be in the app store ecosystem in 2025?

I wasn't describing the tech stack (which was atrocious), I was describing the genre of "bad flash games"

The games developed in Flash that have lived on were better quality and had been meaningfully updated in the last decade... this app is neither high quality nor upkept.

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