A new report with quotes from anonymous developers who Apple Arcade claims the subscription gaming service has no real goals, barely communicates with studios, and mistreats teams, making them jump through hoops and wait months to get paid. One developer even claimed that working with Apple Arcade was like an “abusive relationship.”
Apple Arcade was introduced in 2019 as an ad-free premium subscription service for exclusive games. Every game on the service is free of in-app purchases or annoying mobile game nonsense. Since launching in 2019, Apple Arcade’s library has grown quite a bit, adding over 200 games to the service, including some really great stuff like Whetstone, fantasyOregon Trail, Really Bad Chess, And What about the car? But a new report claims that working with Apple is a frustrating and annoying experience for many developers who create Apple Arcade titles.
In a report dated July 30, MobileGamer.bizNumerous developers spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity, sharing their various issues and concerns regarding Apple Arcade, the tech giant’s lack of vision, and its poor treatment of game studios.
Apple makes developers wait for money and rarely responds
One big problem is that some developers have to spend months chasing Apple to get their money. Apple Arcade works by giving developers a large sum of money up front to develop the game, and then collecting royalties from Apple as more players download and play their titles. In the early days of the service, developers say, those payments arrived promptly, but now those royalty payments can take months to arrive. One developer claimed he had to wait six months to get paid, and it nearly bankrupted his studio.
“It can take weeks to even hear back from Apple, and their response time to emails is typically three weeks, if that,” one developer told MobileGamer.biz. “We’re supposed to be able to ask product, technical and commercial questions, but often half of the Apple team doesn’t show up, and when they do, they have no idea what’s going on and can’t answer our questions, either because they don’t know how to answer them or because they can’t share that information for confidentiality reasons.”
MobileGamer.biz I asked Apple for a comment but received no response.
Another issue is discoverability and advertising on Apple Arcade, with one developer telling the outlet it feels like his game has been sitting in a morgue for the “last two years.”
“No matter what we put in the game, Apple won’t show us, it’s like we don’t exist,” the developer claimed. “So as a developer you think, they gave us this money for exclusivity… I don’t want to give them the money back, but I want people to play my game. It’s like we’re invisible.”
Apple Arcade is cumbersome to use and lacks vision
The same developer described a terrible QA and update process, saying that a single update required multiple back-and-forth meetings with Apple
“Submitting updates is so tedious that our developers have tried to avoid it,” they said.
A person who MobileGamer.biz claimed that a QA and localization process involved submitting 1,000 screenshots at once to show that the game worked flawlessly on all devices and in all languages. “My team was like, ‘There’s no way we’re fucking doing that.'” a source told the outlet.
Another common complaint from developers was a lack of vision or planning on Apple’s part, with some saying the company only lets developers work because it’s a “necessary evil” since games are so popular on Apple devices.
“Given their status as a huge tech company, it feels like they treat developers as a necessary evil,” one developer explained. “And we do everything we can to please them without getting much in return, in the hope that they’ll bless us with another project – and give them the chance to screw us over again.”
“It’s like an abusive relationship where the abused person stays in the relationship hoping that the other partner will change and become the person they could be.”
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