In context: Apple is feeling antitrust pressure from both US and European Union regulators and has just made a series of decisions reverting to its previous practices. In one, retro game emulators will be allowed in the App Store. In another, music streaming apps listed in Europe can now include a link to the developer’s website.
Apple has opened up its App Store to retro game emulators, announcing yesterday that they can be found in the store and offer downloadable games globally.
It’s at the center of a previous policy that banned apps that run third-party code, a category that includes game emulators, frustrating iPhone owners who wanted this content. Now, under the changes, “non-binary software” is allowed in certain cases, with “retro game console emulator apps may offer game downloads” listed as one of those cases.
However, as Ars Technica points out, the language around the guidelines is a bit vague, and it could be that the kind of emulators you see on Android and desktop that support retro games from any external source might not be allowed.
As explained, retro game emulators run on ROM files, which is a computer file that contains a read-only copy of data from a memory chip. There are many types of ROM files, but according to Ars’ interpretation of Apple’s new guidelines, the only ones Apple will allow will be companies that own the intellectual property of their games. So there are no games that are in the public domain or where the author allows distribution, or those created by an owner that no longer exists.
If so, this will clearly limit the type of games that iPhone users will be able to download. According to the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network, a staggering 87 percent of classic video games released in the US are no longer commercially available.
The move comes amid a broad antitrust lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against Apple, targeting the Cupertino giant over software distribution, cloud services, web browsing, third-party services and many other issues that the DOJ says hurt developers and reduce interoperability with other platforms.
The European Union also fined Apple nearly $2 billion last month for favoring its own music streaming service and barring rivals like Spotify from steering users to cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps.
As a result, Apple also announced Friday that music streaming apps on its App Store in Europe can now include a link to the developer’s website, informing users of alternative ways to purchase a subscription. However, he noted that he will charge a 27% commission on the sale of the app on the developer’s website, once a user clicks on an external link from the app and makes a purchase within seven days. Apple claims that the EU ruling did not apply to its fee structure.
Masthead credit: Retro Game Corps