Developers who have created games for Apple Arcade are “unhappy,” according to a new report.
Mobilegamer.biz claims that studios have reported issues getting timely responses from the Apple Arcade team, poor technical support, and detection issues.
One indie developer said they had to wait up to six months to get paid, “which almost put them out of business.”
Others acknowledged that if it weren't for Apple's position of “paying well” and offering generous advances, some studios “wouldn't exist today if it weren't for Apple funding their games.”
“We were able to sign a good deal for our titles that covered our entire development budget,” said one developer.
“Things have changed since the early days. Nowadays, signing a deal with Apple is a very difficult and lengthy process. The lack of vision and clear focus on the platform is frustrating, and if there is a goal at all, it changes every year or so. Also, the technical support is pretty pitiful.”
“We can go weeks without hearing from Apple and their general response time to emails is three weeks, if they respond at all,” said another.
“We're supposed to be able to ask product, technical and business 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 have the knowledge to answer them or they can't share that information for confidentiality reasons.”
Some developers had equally unflattering comments about the Vision Pro, which some described as “a trip down memory lane” as it is “not a machine designed for gaming.”
Others say that although they were approached to make games for Vision Pro, they were not offered any compensation or marketing or promotional support.
The QA process also appears to cause unwarranted “painful” hardship; one QA and localization process is described as “sending 1000 screenshots at a time to prove that all aspect ratios and device languages are covered.”
According to some respondents, there are also issues with discoverability. One said he felt like his game had been “in a morgue for the past two years” because Apple doesn’t include it.
“It's like we don't exist. As a developer, you're like, 'Well, they gave us this money for exclusivity… I don't want to give them the money back, but I do want people to play my game. It's like we're invisible.'”
“I think Arcade knows a lot more about who its audience is today than it did in the beginning. If they're not making clever, high-concept indie games, it's not Apple's fault,” said another positive developer.
“If they can build a business based on family-friendly games, good for them and good for the developers who can take advantage of that opportunity.”
“Given their status as a big tech company, it seems like they treat developers like a necessary evil and that we'll go out of our way to please them for little in return, hoping they'll grace us with another project and a chance for them to screw us over again,” another summed up.
Apple has reportedly not yet responded to requests for comment.
Earlier this year, Epic argued that Apple violated the DMA after initially blocking its attempted release on iOS.
Last month, the European Commission found that Apple's opt-in rules did not comply with the DMA as they “prevented app developers from freely directing consumers to alternative channels to obtain offers and content.”