Oh whoops haha.
Tbf, this isn't even the first time Apple has made big changes between iOS versions which has broken apps. Its just the biggest and the one they gave the most warning about.
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iOS 11 Will Break Compatability With An Estimated 200,000 Apps
- Thread starter HotHamBoy
- Start date
Aztechnology
Member
Yeah, courage for the developers to not update their apps within 4 (or was it 5?) years since Apple told them to go 64bit
Obsolecense. Good time for those developers to release a new 64 bit version and re-charge for them I guess.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
I highly doubt this will actually be a thing. For nearly all of these apps it's either pure apathy (the app has not been a significant source of income in years, if ever), procrastination (you'll see a lot of last second updates), or the result of a defunct developer/publisher. Not some scheme to force repurchasing. I'm not even sure Apple would allow that.
While there's some high profile titles, the overwhelming majority of these 200,000 are going to be long-forgotten releases with extremely low sales/download counts.
If the app gives slow down msg when opening it's not 64Bit. Though, if it's a corporate app I'd say big chance it's exempt. Though, you should warn your work if it is giving the slow down warning.
That's literally the only game I care about if I were to ever declare a game be perfect it would be near the top of that list.
This is why I stopped buying mobil games.
I used to buy tons. Like literally spending hundreds of dollars a year. I bought all the big games from SquareEnix, Gameloft, Capcom. And now so many of those no longer work. I would say more than half.
This not only put me off iPhone games but digital in general. I no longer trust that my games are future proof even on the device I buy them for. Going physical whenever possible (but with patches and DLC even that is becoming increasingly futile).
Before this "All digital future" is anything I will support, stuff like this needs to be worked out.
I used to buy tons. Like literally spending hundreds of dollars a year. I bought all the big games from SquareEnix, Gameloft, Capcom. And now so many of those no longer work. I would say more than half.
This not only put me off iPhone games but digital in general. I no longer trust that my games are future proof even on the device I buy them for. Going physical whenever possible (but with patches and DLC even that is becoming increasingly futile).
Before this "All digital future" is anything I will support, stuff like this needs to be worked out.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
This has literally nothing to do with digital vs physical. If these apps were somehow being sold on mini cartridges they still wouldn't work after this update because they'd still be 32-bit programs.
It has nothing to do with mobile either.
From the games I have that will stop working:
Infinity Blade
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom
GTA: San Andreas (this one is strange as all other GTA games have been updated to 64 bit a year ago).
Ravensword
Metal Slug X
Metal Slug 3
Bard's Tale
All Marathon Games
Metal Slug
Metal Slug 2
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Ravensword 2
Lego Star Wars Saga
Galaxy On Fire
Dungeon Hunter 4
Dungeon Hunter 3
That's it, I'm fucking done with this bullshit.
Fake Edit: And as a bonus, my banking app from one of the biggest banks in Poland.
Infinity Blade
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom
GTA: San Andreas (this one is strange as all other GTA games have been updated to 64 bit a year ago).
Ravensword
Metal Slug X
Metal Slug 3
Bard's Tale
All Marathon Games
Metal Slug
Metal Slug 2
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
Ravensword 2
Lego Star Wars Saga
Galaxy On Fire
Dungeon Hunter 4
Dungeon Hunter 3
That's it, I'm fucking done with this bullshit.
Fake Edit: And as a bonus, my banking app from one of the biggest banks in Poland.
Darkspineslayer
Member
Christ people, you get off GAF for an hour to play a video game and you suddenly get labeled this and that.
I should have fleshed out my point better though, i'll grant that.
The rapid iteration cycle of mobile devices and the throwaway attitude that even the developers take with them turn me off, and have ever since TWEWY took forever to be updated to compatibility with iOS8. It was punctuated to me then, as someone who highly values consumer rights that my purchases could disappear or become irrelevant at any time with no recourse whatsoever. No, that's not mobile's fault, but it does seem to be worse there. At least on my 3DS I can be pretty sure that my purchases will always work on a 3DS.
Mentioning digital distribution was really just a tangential relation to the real problem, and I failed to communicate that properly. I don't feel it appropriate to derail the thread with my issues with digital distribution in a larger context.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Those first four will probably be updated. The rest though... Eesh. (well, at least the ones I'm familiar with, there's a few on there where I couldn't begin to guess).
If the bank is that big, odds are they'll get around to it before iOS 11 drops.
Darkspineslayer
Member
Get off the high horse, sunshine. There are many reasonable concerns that folks could have with that future. This isn't the place to debate that, but my PM box is open if you actually wanted a discussion.
The app still doesn't support high resolution screens properly, so I highly doubt it.
toythatkills
Member
My phone is telling me that it is not fine at the moment
These at least will eventually be updated. Beamdog is working on a massive update for all three of these, to get them up to par with the PC codebase as well as 64-bit support. No ETA except before iOS 11.
ScientificPizza
Banned
It does suck, but you have to make that hard cut *eventually*
It's kind of shocking it was this long imo
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Worrisome, but I imagine "shitty user experience" is a lower concern for them than "people literally can't do mobile banking anymore". I wouldn't lose all hope yet (for the banking app anyway - you're definitely losing some games there).
(that's pretty bad though, even my local credit union keeps their app up-to-date with the latest iOS features)
I wasn't updated to 10.3.1. Whoops.
This really sucks.
Yes but what does that have to do with the consumers who are getting screwed?
Hardware BC is a luxury but an OS update should not break compatability on the same device.
What if consoles did that? Even Windows has compatability modes.
Terrible attitude if you care about game preservation. Many wonderful mobile games out there.
Sadly a lot of great games are still only on iOS. Some will eventually make it to Android but others won't.
Card Thief is one of the best games of the year and it's only on iOS right now.
toythatkills
Member
I'd be really surprised if FFT doesn't get updated eventually, it's really only "dead" games which haven't been updated for years, or where the developer doesn't exist anymore, or something.
If this all really happens the way people fear it will, I'm just going to load all my dying games onto my iPad and then stop updating it. I doubt I'll lose much, in the end, it's just annoying that some stuff I like having on the go, like ZONR, won't be on my phone.
StereoVsn
Member
There is DOS box, mods, VMs, options to easily install old OS on new hardware, etc. All of that is why PC with Win32 as an open platform is superior to closed ones like iOS and why so many PC gamers hate the Windows 10 Store bullshit and MS' plans around it.
FTL not being updated sucks.
That list is nowhere near complete. It's just concerning board games. I think digital board game adaptations is one of the best reasons to own an iPad so this sucks.
StereoVsn
Member
Name a console that did that. Unfortunately mobile platform and fast iterations coupled with a completely closed system will do that.
I guess an alternative is to get a somewhat older device, jailbreak it and keep on older OS version forever.
I think it's because of the idea of it. Physical media clearly goes with a specific format. You expect a 3DS game to work with any new iteration of the 3DS. Not the next new handheld.
With digital, you buy it on the iphone 5, you expect it to work with your iphone 5. You're hardware isn't changing. The software is changing, but you physically arent' switching out the hardware, so in the general publics mind, "Why wouldn't it work?"
In the case of mobile phone gaming, I don't think it has anyting to do with this because there aren't physical mobile games. But in the broader conversation digital definitely falls into this. I can still play my NES games on my original NES. I can also play them on the newer top loading model. Same with all my other physical games. They all work, on the hardware they were purchased for.
People who bought games and apps digitally for iphone 5 will not be able to play something they paid money for, on that hardware. I have my deceased mothers iPad with games that may disappear now if I decide to update that ipad. I keep those on there because of the reminders and the things she wrote and did. I don't want to lose that stuff.
I don't like the digital future. They say we don't technically own the physical games that we buy, but I can lend them, and god forbid, resell them if I need to. Digital is taking that freedom away from us. You're buying a thought at that point. That could get taken away from you at any time. It's already happened, and I expect it to happen more as time goes on.
Eventually you won't be able to play new iPad-only games, though. That sucks. You will basically have to choose between old and new. My iPad is my only iOS device, my phone is Android. I won't even have the option of two devices for two firmwares.
As for FFT, I think it took about a year for SE to fix TWEWY when iOS 8 broke it. Many other games broken by iOS 8 were just delisted or left up to fuck people over.
Ever since a couple of games I bought in 2008-2009 were delisted a few years later and became unavailable for redownload I've always treated ios purchases as a service/rental with no guarantee essentially. It's garbage but the prices are generally suitable for what I get out of them, personally.
You know... If you told me this like five years ago that iphone has backward compatibility problwm
graywolf323
Member
Android is even worse for compatibility, I remember when I had a Samsung Galaxy SII and within a year a lot of the new games would claim to not be compatible with it
Dropping 32-bit emulation from iOS may just as well have hardware implications as it has for software for the next set of phones, we don't know yet, maybe they need the silicon room on the boards for new stuff.
That said, I can't blame Apple for wanting to finally drop emulation of 32-bit from their mobile tech stack, that shit is costly.
I agree that for the price it's not completely awful but a game like FTL or XCOM EW is too perfect for an iPad to lose.
It's gotten much better with newer devices.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Consoles typically have hard cut-offs in support for entire libraries every 4-7 years, which is your closest comparison here, and yet on consoles you can't put out a relatively simple patch to solve that and call it a day. Even with the Xbox One, the only current home console with any backwards compatibility, it took two years to get support for 360 games, and there's going to be a hell of a lot more 360 games left behind (proportionally speaking) than the ~9% of iOS apps being lost here. Hell, iOS developers have been warned to update for four years now, which coincidentally is roughly the entire lifespan of the Wii U, a platform will exactly zero forwards compatibility with its successor.
And why would you need to jailbreak the device? It's not like iOS updates are mandatory.
eyeball_kid
Member
Only if they choose to update their system. Granted, most people do because they use their phones and tablets for more than games, but you can keep your system on iOS 10 and play those games forever if you really want.
Apple is trying to make people's experience on the devices better by getting rid of 32-bit apps. Right now Apple has to load both versions of their frameworks to accomodate both 32 and 64 apps. So they want to get rid of the 32 stuff. They told devs this in 2013. There's no excuse for any dev not to have updated their app by now. But sadly so many game publishers release a game on mobile and abandon it.
That comparison makes no sense. Consoles are seperate machines, seperate architectures, seperate OS's.
An OS update would not be acceptable if it broke game compatibility. Obviously you know a new console isn't going to necessary play the previous console's games. But you can also keep the old console and it will keep working.
We are talking about losing access to games on the very same device.
While iOS updates aren't mandatory, there's a good chance that a lot of people who didn't update to 10.3.1 and don't know about this will blindly update to 11 and irreversibly lose access to apps.
It's not really a problem most people expect to deal with.
Also, a lot of devs can't update their apps because the devs just don't exist anymore
boneyjangles
Member
I won't miss anything like I miss Monkey Island 2 disappearing from the app store a few years ago.
toythatkills
Member
Sword&Poker2 (again, best game on iOS) was released in 2010 and I'm not sure it ever needed to be updated.
Then the publisher went out of existence, the game was removed from the store, Konami bought the IP and released a shitty freemium version of it, and so the chance of a 64bit version are below zero.
flipswitch
Member
How much time/work goes into upgrading to 64bit for devs?
eyeball_kid
Member
It's not a huge effort. But if a dev hasn't updated their app since 2013 or earlier, there's going to be a lot of API changes they may need to support, especially on the UI side of things. If a game is doing mostly doing everything in OpenGL, they may be able to upgrade with minimal time investment compared to non-game apps.
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
An understated side-point I was making in my post in that any comparisons between mobile and console are going to be flawed, because the iPhone is a roughly contiguous platform going back a whole decade. That's not to say this is a mobile-unique scenario however. It's an issue with OS-as-a-platform, and desktop operating systems have had lost compatibility over the years as well, even will built-in emulation and partial collections of legacy APIs and libraries. You're not running Win16 software on Windows 10 for example, and there will always be programs that won't run after updating to the next major OS revision.
The only reason it hasn't been an issue with game consoles is literally because game consoles have historically been less concerned with compatibility, with each hardware revision typically being a full break. A console isn't going to have an OS update that kills off older games released on the console, because a console isn't going to have a major hardware/software architecture change mid-generation either, of course, because that's just going to be the next generation. And that next generation with a full-break is damn near a fact of life on consoles.
Apple's been supporting legacy 32-bit code now for 4-years now, eventually there had to be a hard-cut in support, like there is on every platform. The OS isn't going to keep piling on legacy APIs and libraries until the end of time, no OS is. Even the almighty Win32 32-bit support will eventually die.
Ninjagorilla
Member
That's not true, and very much depends on a lot of factors. We have almost our entire catalog to update, which will take significant amount of time, and very likely not make the money back, and take time from our current project. So, it's quite the investment, and one that not every developer can afford to do.
But we want to do it because we care about our games and we want them to live on. Laziness has very little to do with it.
Wonderful!