Apple says they're removing my game because it's more than 2 years old

Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by jws on Saturday April 23, 2022 @03:53PM (#31137848)

Best case, check out your code, bump the version number, touch up your copyright date, hit "Run", do your testing¹, hit upload, have a sandwich, check it out in TestFlight, approve a release, maybe check a few boxes that say you aren't shipping super secret encryption technology to shunned nations.²

But usually after a few years Xcode will bitch at you about a lot of stuff, so maybe you raise the minimum OS version requirement, click "Fix it" on a lot of API respellings, find a couple that it can't automatically fix so you have to google that a bit. Then test and upload.

Maybe get in a fight with Xcode over your signing keys.

Sometimes something you were using gets deprecated and you have to use the newer replacement. That takes some coding.

It can get ugly if the 'owner' in the app store is not you or is an entity you no longer control. Then you have to get them involved to do the chain of trust signing.

If you produced it under contract, you may not be legally allowed to update it without a new contract.

␃

¹ do your testing is easy to say, but that could take an arbitrarily long time depending on how thorough you are. I expect this to be the dominant cost for most game updates.

² I pulled out one of my aging apps and just did all this to check, 10 minutes from "checkout" to "installed in TestFlight". The dreaded App Store review was 3 minutes. This isn't really a fair data point though, Xcode didn't suggest any source code changes so it was just bumping numbers and rebuilding.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by DaveSapien on Saturday April 23, 2022 @04:02PM (#31137945)

If only it where only that simple.

There are many dependancies that require some kind of reimplementation, it's a pain.

I have made things easier (in the long run) with my last game. I wrote it all in c++ with all dependancies under my control. I was thinking >20 years ahead for that one.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by http-teapot on Saturday April 23, 2022 @08:47PM (#31140209)

Can you share your game?

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by DaveSapien on Monday April 25, 2022 @08:05AM (#31153323)

Yeah sure thing, this is Kanso on iOS (its also on Steam)

https://apps.apple.com/app/id1384257762

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by ativzzz on Saturday April 23, 2022 @10:11PM (#31140662)

What do you use to write mobile games in C++?

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by DaveSapien on Monday April 25, 2022 @08:06AM (#31153339)

A computer for the most part.

Xcode, I use Xcode for the most part and visual studio for the Steam version.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by DaveSapien on Monday April 25, 2022 @01:42PM (#31158224)

Realised that was a bit snarky of a comment, I'm using a a modified version of Cocos2dx .v4.

It took way longer to create than if I was using Unity, but its a great solution for a small and performant end product. I was able to get Kanso down below 100MB and will run on a total potato. Something I highly doubt I could do in Unity without some serious effort.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by callmeal on Sunday April 24, 2022 @12:20AM (#31141272)

> Best case, check out your code, bump the version number, touch up your copyright date,

You missed one step: buy a new mac because the current version of xcode will not run on your old one.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by vrzucchini on Sunday April 24, 2022 @03:55AM (#31142080)

I think you could achieve this on an EC2 Mac instance

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by WesolyKubeczek on Sunday April 24, 2022 @04:09AM (#31142146)

Or Hetzner, or Scaleway for less draconian pricing.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by afro88 on Saturday April 23, 2022 @09:45PM (#31140521)

This can take days. Tough ask for indie devs that are probably close to the wire, to insert a days long project, per app, into their schedule.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by megablast on Saturday April 23, 2022 @10:54PM (#31140888)

It can also take minutes. I had to add some screenshots, and recompile, then resubmit.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by jbverschoor on Saturday April 23, 2022 @08:30PM (#31140104)

Exactly why apple requires this

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by jzb on Saturday April 23, 2022 @08:53PM (#31140237)

To cause developer pain?

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by jbverschoor on Sunday April 24, 2022 @03:21AM (#31141950)

To remove deprecated APIs, and to be able to force certain things like new capabilities.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by yuuko11 on Saturday April 23, 2022 @11:52PM (#31141151)

The price for high levels of consistency. This is why Apple doesn't have the obsolete remnants problem that Windows does.

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Re:Apple says they're removing my game because it's more tha... by ummwhat on Sunday April 24, 2022 @03:08AM (#31141892)

Consistently not being able to run code that was just fine 2 years ago. Consistently having "quality assurance checks" that somehow always entail paying more rent to Apple.

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