Once again, Apple proves that it doesn’t deserve its monopoly on mobile gaming.
I recently wrote extensively about how Apple, despite being one of the largest players in gaming by revenue, is a hostile presence to innovation and value in gaming. The high taxes it places on its developers and restrictive regulations limit competition and consumer choice, while also preventing certain business models from proliferating on its tightly controlled platform. You’d be forgiven for thinking they did this to protect their business, but there’s a growing body of evidence that Apple is simply ignorant, or perhaps just dismissive, of what gamers and game developers want and need.
Nothing illustrated this point more succinctly than this post shared by Tom Warren of The Verge from a publisher behind one of the best PC games and best Xbox games of the launch year, Untitled Goose Game. The whimsical puzzler puts you in command of a combative water bird, with a raw effect.
Developed by House House, who co-founded Panic Inc, the game’s publisher, Cabel Sasser explained why Apple blocked the game from coming to the MacOS store, and it’s pretty hilarious.
When app and game developers submit their programs to closed stores, they are subject to the rules and regulations of each individual store. Many of the rules make perfect sense, aimed at blocking things like hate speech and malware. Others, however, are a little less sensible. Apple notoriously blocked Xbox Cloud Gaming from hitting iOS because it wanted Microsoft and its partners to ship every single game to the iOS app store as separate entities, a feat that would prove impossible as games enter and exit the service. It would be akin to asking Netflix to list every show and movie it has in stock as separate downloads on iOS. That could at least be seen as anti-competitive. However, in the case of Untitled Goose Game, Apple’s reasoning makes no sense.
Sasser explained that Apple blocked Untitled Goose Game because the entry’s reviewer didn’t know how to skip the credits. Realizing their mistake, Apple came up with another reason to block the game, after which Panic Inc. simply thought it wasn’t worth their time and effort to get around Apple’s arbitrary rules.
In creative products like games, Apple literally leaves money on the table by being so restrictive with its access rules. However, Apple also has more money than God, so I doubt they will lose much sleep over it.
In any case, Untitled Goose Game is available on just about every other platform, and it’s awesome. You should definitely play it.