Yon the 15 years since it launched the App Store, Apple has shown time and time again that it cares very little about games, even though it’s happy to make billions from them. You should know: I was a publisher of App Store games for seven years.
It all started so well. When the iPhone and iPad came along, those devices transformed gaming almost as much as they revolutionized the rest of the tech world. Suddenly everyone had powerful gaming machines in their pockets, and it was amazing. Some wonderful developers broke through. Zach Gage launched his career with the artistic word search game Tetris-meets-SpellTower; Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt turned platforming tropes into a post-apocalyptic desperate run; The clever gothic puzzler Helsing’s Fire gave us our first glimpse into the mind of Lucas Pope, later the creator of Papers, Please.
There were many more. And not just indie games, but commercial hits: Spry Fox’s brilliant Triple Town, Rovio’s Angry Birds; Flight control; Doodle Jump; Cut the rope; drop7; jetpack ride; New soccer star. All true innovative games from developers that have never had global hits before.
So what did Apple do next? Nothing really. He seemed to create a whole new gaming ecosystem by accident, and has presided over it as a dismissive owner ever since. It takes a tasty 30% cut of almost all in-app purchases doing almost nothing to earn that fee. Recent privacy policies, including the introduction of that “ask app not to track” pop-up you’ve seen time and time again, have even actively hurt the mobile gaming business.
As the App Store grew and grew, Apple’s small app review team in Cupertino, California, which checks whether or not a game should be approved for sale, became overwhelmed. At the same time, free-to-play arrived and the mobile gaming gold rush began. The developers released their games for free and earned their money from in-app purchases from a small number of high-spending players, referred to as whales, rather than asking everyone for cash up front.
The woefully understaffed team of app reviewers couldn’t handle the volume of games coming in, and apparently still can’t today. Ask any mobile game studio staff member and we guarantee you’ll have an app review horror story where your game was repeatedly rejected for an arbitrary reason or removed from sale entirely. The developers are being treated with contempt.
Meanwhile, a cheeky clone navigates through the app review process without a hitch. It’s been going on for years. In 2016, a hilarious fake “minecraft 2” was approved for sale by the app review team and made it to the top 10 before it was withdrawn from sale. Shameless Pokemon scams also succeed surprisingly often.
Late last year, the developer of the indie hit vampire survivors said it had to quickly launch a mobile edition to stop the flow of clones and copies from the App Store. Recently, a fake ChatGPT app passed app review and quickly climbed the charts before someone noticed and pulled it from sale. It’s not good enough.
Apple could have reinvested a larger fraction of the billions it’s made from mobile gaming to make the App Store a great place to find fun and interesting games to suit your tastes. But it hasn’t, and today the App Store is a confusing mess, made even worse recently by the addition of ad slots in search, on the front page, and even on the product pages themselves.
The search is still terrible, too. game developers search in vain for their own games on launch day, eventually finding them, having searched for the exact title – under a bunch of other nonsense.
Mobile gaming has a bumpy ride for some people, including this esteemed publication, for many reasons. But there are good things out there. If you want the best of mobile right now, try Marvel Snap, Song of Bloom, Beatstar, Brawl Stars, Royal Match, Among Us, Vampire Survivors, Mario Kart Tour, Archero, or Scrabble Go. Also try blockbusters like Diablo Immortal and Call of Duty Mobile, both cleverly compressed PC and console games that are much more immediate and accessible than anything you’ll find on a dedicated gaming platform.
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However, finding the good stuff is hard. Apple, and indeed Google’s Play store, have opened the floodgates to developers without really making sure that what’s available is up to the task. It’s a wild west.
Fortunately, things may be about to change, including that 30% commission on all in-app purchases. After a forceful legal battle in the US. between Apple and Epic Games over alleged monopolistic practices, government bodies in the UK, EU, US, Japan and elsewhere are looking into Apple and Google’s “effective duopoly” over what we watch, do and play on our phones.
A recent White House report indicated that Apple’s and Google’s current app store policies “have the potential to harm consumers by inflating prices and reducing innovation.” He recommended that tech giants open up their digital storefronts to outside competition and offer other ways for users to pay for game content.
So perhaps once those huge App Store profits come under real threat, we’ll see Apple begin to take its role as a mobile gaming platform more seriously. It’s got the excellent Apple Arcade subscription service, sure, but it’s going to take more than that to help salvage the reputation of mobile gaming.
