, the company vowed it would go out of its way to remove applications that had stopped working, not kept up with its latest guidelines or become outdated. After not drawing much attention over the last few years, that policy came back into the public consciousness this week. In a series of tweets spotted by
, a handful of indie developers shared an email notice from Apple prompting them to update their games.“This app has not been updated in a significant amount of time and is scheduled to be removed from sale in 30 days,” the company states in the email. “You can keep this app available for new users to discover and download from the App Store by submitting an update for review within 30 days.”
Apple notes developers can continue to earn revenue from microtransactions even if it removes their app or game from the store. Moreover, their programs will continue to work for those who have them downloaded to their devices. Some people who shared screenshots of the notice on Twitter“This is an unfair barrier to indie devs,” Protopop Games developer Robert Kabwe.
Obviously, there isn’t an easy answer to the situation. From the perspective of an iOS user, it’s not great when you buy a new Apple device and find apps that aren’t optimized to take advantage of the hardware. I encountered that situation when I bought my
Well that's a terrible spin on what's happening in your headline.