Black Ops

Back in October of 2014, Apple announced that all app developers needed to upgrade their apps to 64-bit, and that all new apps created starting in February, 2015 needed to be migrated to and rebuilt as 64-bit apps. This change happened starting with iOS 11, and Apple started displaying warnings with iOS 10.3 or so.

This game developer didn't update the game for 64-bit.

This game isn't for sale anymore, given it's 32-bit.

And as for spending your money on a game that no longer exists, you didn't purchase forever-upgrade-support for this app, you purchased a license to play a game. A game that you've since been able to play for some time now, and can still play on older iPhone and iPad devices, too.

Unmaintained apps just don't run forever, if the users are also upgrading devices and software.

Examples of this are are legion.

Check with the developer, and see if they have an upgrade or an alternative game.

You can certainly request a refund for the game from Apple, though any likelihood of success with that seems, well, doubtful, given the age of the game and given the length of its use. Request a refund for apps or content that you bought from Apple - Apple Support

Whymustitbe wrote:

Do you think that Apple, a billion-dollar company, could have built an emulator to run 32-bit games?

Sure. Absolutely. Now think through the implications of this added work.

This means an incremental cost to develop the increasing numbers of guests of the past, the costs to back-port fixes and updates such as SSL/TLS into each of these past guests (nothing is ever static in security, and many apps need network connections), regression testing and packaging work, and to inevitably see incompatible changes either blocked or see app-breaking compatibility changes to keep older guests working, and also to constrain what new work can provided.

And this work all to benefit those not really spending money to keep their apps updated, too.

And quite possibly to the detriment of new work and new updates for the folks that are buying.

I have worked in an environment that did what you are suggesting with long-term (a decade or more) upward compatibility too, and it’s a great trap for a vendor, and more subtly a great trap for the customers—as they both realize that some other platform quite possibly from some other vendor—some new console, for instance—has outstripped their current product choices.

Enterprise environments see this same conflict quite commonly, too. Many would prefer to never upgrade. But they also want fixes. Non-trivial fixes tend to be incompatible, or expensive or impossible to back-port. And they want newer features. Which pretty soon means upgrades.

Want this game? Stay on an iPhone or iPad or iPod touch running an older version. Or buy a console, and run your games there for as long as that console continues to work, and for as long as the network services and license services for networked games and licensed games remain available and compatible.

Whymustitbe wrote:

Ok, thank you for the information. I will make sure to keep this in mind from now and into the near future. No longer will I be spending a dime on anything in the app store. Once again thank you.

The issue is not the App Store. The issue is that the developers of the apps you're referring to abandoned them. Where you bought them from is not relevant.

So, you're suggesting that if it weren't for the App Store, the software developers of the Black Ops would have continued to develop it? On what do you base that assumption? There was a game I loved, PegLeg, that worked under something like Mac OS 9. And it came on a diskette. I can't play that game now because the hardware has moved on and the developers never updated it. There was no App Store then.

Software has never been something you bought and "owned". You have always licensed it. And how would "owning" it have made a difference anyway? It still would have stopped working when the hardware moved on. I don't think it's easy for developers to predict in advance how long they will support an app for. It's going to depend on how popular it is, how much money they make off of it, whether it's cost-effective to spend a lot of development hours and dollars to keep it updated.

But, you have an opportunity hear to learn an important life lesson, one that goes far beyond software: Nothing lasts forever. Enjoy it while you can, remember it fondly, and move on.

Whymustitbe wrote:

No dude I'm suggesting I bought a video game. If I had bought the game for the same money on console; I would have been able to put the disk in, load the game, and play zombies. I couldn't do that. I buy video games so I can play them at a later date not to see my money vanish. I'm not wasting my money on the AppStore because stuff like this can and will happen. I learned more on the topic and I appreciate that, but what I learned might not have been what you wanted to teach me.

And, if your old game console died and you bought a newer version, it might well not support the older games. And, you still only have a licence for those video game disks. You don't own the software and you never did.

What do you mean Apple isn't letting you play the game anymore?

Apple doesn't have much control over apps beyond approving them for sale in the App Store. They can't make developers update apps.