[HN Gopher] Santa Ragione says Apple is delisting Wheels of Aure...
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Santa Ragione says Apple is delisting Wheels of Aurelia 'without
justification'
Author : saubeidl
Score : 27 points
Date : 2025-07-15 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamedeveloper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamedeveloper.com)
| leakycap wrote:
| The image at the top of this article is beautiful, so I was
| confused why Apple would pull such an aesthetically pleasing
| game.
|
| But then I searched the App Store for the game. The description
| still says "80% off!" from prior endless sales, the art style is
| pretty bad even for the 2015 copyright date, and the storyline is
| "I just robbed that bank" and similarly shallow storylines.
|
| This isn't art as people would think of it, this reminds me of a
| run of the mill flash game from another decade.
| theletterf wrote:
| I don't think you're talking of the same game.
| https://mrdavepizza.com/wheels-of-aurelia/
| leakycap wrote:
| You think that I'm looking at the wrong thing? I'm looking at
| "Wheels of Aurelia" in the App store, subtitle "Interactive
| Italian Road Trip" and published by Santa Ragione srl
|
| Did you take the time to download it or look at the listing
| vs the article?
|
| The article itself has a large image and no screenshots of
| the app. The app looks nothing like the image in the article,
| though.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Art doesn't have to be _good_. It 's a visual novel and there's
| plenty of dialogue that attempts to have meaningful themes
| (regardless of whether it succeeds). I'm not sure why it
| shouldn't be considered art.
| leakycap wrote:
| Did you look at the App Store listing, or download and try
| the free app? It's surprisingly bad. I was ready to comment
| against this decision until I looked at it myself.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| No, I simply looked at a few videos of people playing it.
| Note that I'm not saying it's a good game, just that being
| a bad game doesn't imply it's not art.
| leakycap wrote:
| The developer -sorry, studio- is the one claiming this is
| art. I was curious, looked, and saw nothing remotely
| resembling art.
|
| I encourage you to review the App Store listing since
| that is what is being removed. The description on this
| free app still shows "80% off limited time sale!" on this
| art (which is now free, so the description makes no
| sense).
|
| I think this is much ado about nothing. If you cared
| about the app, make it something people want. Nobody
| wants a game from 2015 with bad graphics and lackluster
| storyline.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Art is in the eye of the beholder.
| privatelypublic wrote:
| You say that as if some of the most popular game franchises
| aren't direct continuations of flash games.
|
| Flash was readily available, low cost (before creative cloud),
| had few to no platform specific issues. Basically- the easiest
| possible entry for young devs and game devs.
| duxup wrote:
| >We firmly believe that removing fully functional artistic works
| simply due to infrequent updates undermines the value and
| sustainability of games as cultural and artistic products. Like
| books, films, and music albums, video games represent complete
| creative works that do not inherently require continual updates
| beyond maintaining basic functionality
|
| Is the Apple app store there to provide that kind of perpetual
| access?
|
| A book's perpetual existence is mostly because a physical copy
| exists, that's not really the same, nor is anyone assuring it
| still exists.
|
| I do sympathize with the issue about requiring updates and etc, I
| ran into that with Google recently, but I'm not sure I buy into
| this idea that requiring updates shouldn't happen ever because
| "my game is like art and art doesn't require updates".
| Rohansi wrote:
| It's a pretty sad trap to fall into. All of these games are
| doomed to fall out of support and never be played again if
| nobody maintains them. Consoles have emulators and PC games
| usually just keep working but what is the solution for the
| mobile games worth saving?
| Someone wrote:
| > Consoles have emulators
|
| All of them written by hobbyists, without support from
| console manufacturers, isn't it?
|
| Is there anything that Apple does to prevent hobbyists from
| writing an iOS emulator? If so, do other manufacturers do
| better?
| wodenokoto wrote:
| As a customer, yes. I own iOS games that I cannot play and
| frankly I think that sucks.
| mdiesel wrote:
| If they provided a plausible way to sideload then they'd be on
| stronger grounds. It's the same as Stop Killing Games. Apple
| shouldn't carry the burden of hosting forever, but equally they
| can't just make something disappear forever.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm not opposed to side loading in general, but the idea that
| side loading would work perpetually for old code also doesn't
| seem possible.
| barnabee wrote:
| I used to think this but we have DOSBox, etc.
|
| Even if something stopped working, that doesn't mean it can
| never work again.
|
| Apple aren't obliged to keep the platform backwards
| compatible as long as they let people try to run their
| software.
| mey wrote:
| Apple should commit to a support life cycle on the front end
| then. You are being sold this product with support for a
| minimum of 'x' time frame. You are not 'buying' this.
|
| Ideally what Stop Killing Games would like is game
| preservation, but at minimum we need honesty/transparency
| about product market places. I finally know what my minimum
| OS lifecycle is for my Pixel phone, and I can make a
| comfortable purchase decision based on that.
|
| Even Steam isn't immune to this, it simply has an good track
| record relative compared to most other platforms.
|
| Apple took a ~30% cut of the sale of the product. That should
| calculate into it's servicing of the product. To Ross Scott's
| points (and many others), if you have a perpetual service but
| a onetime/lifetime payment, the business model will
| eventually not net out.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| The other post[0] has a link with a more balanced take which
| provides what some of these app store rules are. It's curious
| that they don't simply add the necessary (by store policy): ' _"
| Compatibility updates" include device resolution adds, of which
| there have been three since the last time the game was updated._'
|
| That is not a change to the game (or their art), simply an update
| that keeps the game in compliance. However, that would also mean
| that they now have to comply with the newer privacy policies that
| have been put in place since their last update, and declare what
| data it and any 3rd party dependancies siphons from Appstore
| users. IMO, it's worth considering that that would be worth
| causing a fuss about if one did not want to expose this
| information.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44574059
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