I, as my others, tried to explain that this is not small labor. Please read the many comments related to this post before making such a incorrect statement.

If majority of games won't be around in 10-20 years, then it's a pretty good analogy of the parent post.

> I, as my others, tried to explain that this is not small labor.

The phrase "small labor" has a legal meaning. This is not a colloquial attempt to describe the workload as small.

However, also, as an author of unity iOS software who's gone through this, I do think the amount of labor being described here is pretty over the top.

Even in an extreme case I would only expect dep upgrades to take a couple days.

I've read the many comments, thanks. It's just that I don't really agree with them.

As both a developer who's been through this, and as a user, like many other people in this comment thread, I agree with this policy. I believe that abandonware doesn't really belong in store. It makes it much harder for me to use my phone, that every time I want to do task X, I can't find an app for ten minutes because I'm digging through all the shovelware.

I also don't see any moral imperative to keep games available, frankly. To me it seems like insisting that every board game ever printed should still be on sale somewhere.

I think that if people feel the need to compare this to murder and political oppression, they're kind of ceding that if they describe it correctly, nobody's going to be angry.

In general, I treat invalid comparisons to war crimes as a warning sign, internally.

.

> If majority of games won't be around in 10-20 years, then it's a pretty good analogy of the parent post.

This has always been the case with computer games.

Try to dig up some 2600 or Colecovision games. I'll wait.

I don’t believe any game/app that was/is available on one or two of many hand held computing devices is worth much “labor” from the maintainers of said game’s/app’s operating environment. I think it’s kind of hilarious to think that ANY application written to be run on a mobile device is so important that it should run forever or even X amount of time without adhering to the constraints of the runtime environment. Humanity NEEDS access to my iOS 1.0 minesweeper because <misplaced _software_ideology>

The game could easily rely on functionality that is no longer available. It may now violate some new content guideline. Either would have the effect of silencing them.

The author will eventually die, and then their work will either be modified without their oversight or deleted from the archives.

As the quote says, the problem extends beyond just video games.

What no longer available functionality, specifically, should be in the store? That story does not make sense

What things against content guidelines should still be in store? That story does not make sense

Oh no, a store doesn't carry a video game for all eternity, past an author's death? Oh no. Since Apple is the country's archivist, the phone store should probably carry every single app ever written for all time. Screw the user experience, Apple's obligation is to the author of Lizard Pong

There is no problem

He has to be alive to do that.

The poster of the article is alive, as is the person I'm talking to