What happened to the ipod click wheel games in iTunes?

hey guys,i know what you mean about them not being there,ive been waiting to get an itunes card for ages,when i finaly got one,i tryed to buy asphalt 4 on itunes.clicked on the sidebar and games are not there,then i tryed a link from an iternet website,that worked once,but then i guess itunes found that out too, and deleted all records of click wheel games,because now when i try the link,it simply states"THE ITEM YOU HAVE REQUESTED IS NOT CURRANTLY AVALIABLE IN THE STORE"ive looked both in aust and us storeS.NOTHING!perhaps itunes is trying to get rid of click wheel ipods all together.

If you go to the iTunes Store and pull down the App Store tab you'll see "iPod Click Wheel Games" at the very bottom. Have fun.

...Ummm no... I was on the store earlier this week wanting to check out what games i could get with my check on Friday. I looked around picked out the ones i liked... I went back today and it is gone.!!! Go now and see... I even searched for it! Click Wheel Games does not exist to them... they dont want my money! Sounds so... Un -apple-like! I will buy and download them all... if I knew where to find them!

eah.. I know! same here! What a crock of B.S! I can find old school games from 1988 to download and play on my PC... but CLICK WHEEL IPOD! Nope! ... too outdated...

I actually bought a couple of games before this happened, and had them on my ipod nano, but when i updated i tunes... *poof* they were gone... off of my ipod too... so i guess that was a waste of $10. thanks Apple.

(noticing this after wasting $50 on a released, but un-finished PC game.)

and now i just have like 0.39 GB on my ipod, that i can't see or use. I don't even know what it is!?

Yeah. From 2007-2009 I'd Slowly bought every single Ipod Click Wheel Game I could find At 5.99$ each. But my old computer died & so I bought a new one. Now after updating my 120Gb ipod suddenly The games Don't Work Anymore. That is $283.44 dollars Wasted!!! For some reason they still seem to be on the ipod but they won't work anymore. This makes me skeptical about ever buying a newer iPod Touch or Phone because now I could expect that the same thing will eventually happen again.

Today it's time for a phone call. I'll try to remember to post how this turns out for me. What they have to say.

Well I wrote an issue then got iTunes to call me and it seems to me that the Woman on the phone gave me the same address that I contacted her from.

She told me to go to
expresslane.apple.com - iTunes Store - Issues - The write a description.

This has been my second try calling iTunes and it is quickly becoming a headache

Unlike iOS apps, iPod Click Wheel Games were always sold on a one-time only download that you were reminded to back up. Even if they were still on sale you wouldn't have been entitled to a second download, though the store staff have been known to be generous in this respect in the past. I don't know if it is even technically possible for them to be reissued at this point but there is no harm in asking.

tt2

I have now had someone whom I could properly understand and better helped me. He told me how to contact them about replacing my files. It was the same as what the woman had told me in a step by step format. They were both very helpfull. My mistake was that I was looking up for support about my ipod classic but This time they told me to to look up help about the Itunes Store.

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/ which lead me to

expresslane.apple.com - On the left I click on iTunes under product catagories (Not ipod classic) then
iTunes Store -
Purchases Billing & Redemption -
How to recover missing purchased items - Fill out some information

write a description -

If you are trying to buy new click wheel games then you may have a problem

I believe that they no longer sell the iPod click wheel games
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/30/apple-removes-ipod-click-wheel-games-from-it unes/

Ugh. I hate apple! I never liked Microsoft or Apple, because they are awful. The only reason why I use an ipod because it's the most used, and you can get songs easier, and stuff like.I just bought a refurbished nano 4th generation because I thought a smaller ipod would be great for working out and just going places. I was just hoping to buy some games and I couldn't find them. Apple is screwing people over and themselves. People want to give them money for a game, so they take it away.... that makes so much sense... not. They're probably doing this to force people to buy an ipod touch/iphone/ipad. I'm very angry. I don't plan on buying any more apple products. I'll only buy stuff on itunes.

The message which they sent back Has Made Me Very Angry. I'm Not going on apple pay per incident Paying $35 for a phone call if they can't send me an email with answers to a couple f*****g questions. So I suppose you can tell that right now I Am F*****G P****D Off.

Since I sent them the first message I authorized my new computer which didn't re-activate me games. Then I went onto Google searching "how to copy files from iPod to computer."

Which Led me to this website

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/copying-music-from-ipod-to-co mputer/

I searched again for a program & downloaded a trial version of Touch Copy. Somehow I managed to re-activate my lost games and copy most of the files back onto my computer using "Touch Copy". Then I downloaded the last 4 missing files from somewhere else

Now that I have fixed my problem without Apple's expensive help

I Really Want To Know the answers to questions # 3 & 4

3) Can I copy or download the files to Replace my $300 worth of games and put them back onto my iPod using Itunes?

4) Will Apple iTunes let me put the games back onto my iPod without deleting them thinking that I have stolen something which i paid for?

After all I have already paid $300 for the files.

As for everyone reading this. If your unhappy with those ****** I want you to know the fact that there are other ways to download their programs. Also other programs which you can use to put music & their games onto your iPods. I believe that As long as you don't use iTunes there may be nothing they can do about it. But if you do you should know that it is possible that you are taking a risk.

First off you should know that your iPod ClickWheel Games were sold to you on a one time only download policy with a reminder to backup your files against just such a disaster as you have encountered. If these were physical products that you had broken, lost or had stolen from you then you wouldn't expect a free replacement from the store you bought them from so why are you angry at anyone other than yourself now?

FWIW Apple has changed the repeat download policy for music and TV shows within the last year. As far as I know iOS apps have always been subject to repeat download, but in all cases subsequent downloads are permitted on the proviso that the item has not been removed from the store. In other words you should still backup any data you care not to lose.

While the ClickWheel games are no longer on sale it might be possible to request that they are requeued for download to your account if you explain the circumstances of your loss and ask nicely. Conversely it could well be the case that the store support staff simply have no ability to grant such a request whether as part of store policy or because the files are no longer held on their servers.

I've successfully extracted media from iPods before now, both with third-party software and a brute force approach which simply copies off everything and then lets iTunes rebuild it from tags. I've not worried about extracting games before but a quick search of my iPod hard drive shows no signs of the .ipg files. What I did spot however was the three Games_XX folders in iPod Control. Since we know that it is possible for iTunes to transfer a game from a device into an authorized library that is missing that game there ought to be a way to do it by hand. Having previously determined that iMovie projects on an iPhone are actually .zip files containing the resources and control files of the project it seems a safe bet that .ipg files are the same. Sure enough I made a copy of one of my existing games, changed the extension to .zip and had a look inside. The contents match the contents of one of the \iPod_Control\Games_RO\<5 digits> folders on my device. At a guess zipping each of these folders up into a regular zip file, changing the extension to .ipg and then importing the resulting files into iTunes ought to work. Time to test the theory...

Time Passes...

OK, I've tried taking one of my existing games from the device, zipping it up, and changing the extension. I used XPs built-in "make a compressed file" tool but it produces a different sized output to my original ipg. When I tried to import it into a test library I got a 39 error so we're close, but no cigar. I don't have time to repeat the experiment using WinZip and different compression options but there is a reasonable chance that one of them might work. If you can turn the folder into an importable .ipg and you have authorized the computer to the account that originally purchased it then it should work.

Good luck.

tt2

Hello turingtest2

The zipping folders and unzipping .ipg seems like a good idea.

I have my original game folders with authorization but my ipod stopped playing them. I am wondering if I got an older version of iTunes from filehippo and converted to my backups to .ipg if iTunes would pick it up. I tried dragging just the folders but no luck with Itunes recognizing it.

Have you tried other options since "I don't have time to repeat the experiment using WinZip and different compression options"?

Hi there turingtest2,

I have the same issue as Alexie, although only £8 worth of games.

I do back up everything on my computer using time machine. The problem is that Itunes seem to have somewhere along the way deleted the Ipod game files. They still exist on the ipod but have been removed from my computer (my backups only go back to january 2012 and the games do not appear that far back).

I dont see how I could have done anything diffently with backing up my games as I dont seem to have lost anything else...

my layman theory innitially was that the problem had occured due to the Icloud backup system missing out the protocol for backing up the "ipod games" folder. This theory is not correct I know but I think the problem is definately caused by something that apple has done as aposed to it being anything that us the customers have done.

I have also been given the run-around by apple support- they reply in such a way that it sort of sounds like they are trying to help but not really helping at all. Im pretty sure they are trained to do this.

turingtest2 I am not sure if you work for apple or if you just know more than the average joe, but from reading your messages you seem to have an out of proportion respect for apple and a skill for diverting the attention from the actual issue at hand.

Im sure that if someone had the time and patience to put it together, this would be a good case for a consumer watchdog case. I myself am just glad it is only £8 they got me for.