All Llamasoft games have been pulled from the AppStore and from our purchase history. This is truly a dark day in gaming history and Jeff Minter's presence will be lost to future generations of iOS gamers. His quirky and imaginative games were always a source of glee to his loyal followers and an inspiration to other developers such as Butterscotch Shenanigans. What a pity, I hope this is just a temporary loss. Don't forget us Jeff.
Damn you, Atari. Literally an over-the-hill conglomerate VS one bearded British guy who lives on a small farm with a llama. I wouldn't be surprised if that whole scene broke him, at least a little. Who wants their reward for a game they've been working on for years be getting to surround yourself with lawyers and be bled dry?
Something similar happened a while back, if I remember rightly. Llamasoft's games disappeared from the AppStore and disappointed confusion/confused disappointment followed. I think the explanation was that the developer's license and registration had lapsed--I forget the amount but apparently developers need to pay a yearly fee to keep their games alive on the store. Mr. Minter then renewed said license and the games returned. Hopefully this is just the same type of deal. Long live Llamasoft!
Yeah, they've been gone and come back before. It wasn't a slip-up or anything, that time. It's just that Minter is constantly balancing his distaste for the mobile audience (and not making enough money to even pay for that $100 yearly license) and his appreciation of his customers. At that time, the former won, but eventually the latter made him come back around. We'll see what happens this time, but I'd suggest keeping his games on your devices if you value them. They're quite small in terms of memory space and Minter has definitely washed his hands of iOS for the most part.
I thought of that but if I remember right they were ever pulled from our history before. That's usually a bigger deal than just overdue licenses.
I was just looking for one of his games and then found this thread. He made quite a few of his games free over the past year so I wasn't sure if that was his way of quitting. Just letting them go for free until his license ran out. Were they iOS 9 compatible? If not, maybe he didn't want to bother to update them. Sad if they never resurface.
Not paying the apple fee certainly shouldnt effect purchase history. By shouldn't, I mean it isn't a wise idea on Apple's part.
Goat up was one of my favorites , which is still present in my old iPhone . Llamasoft was one of the best developers and it will never be forgotten.
Thank god I have a backup of all Llamasoft games on my computer. But I will miss them, Jeff please come back to iOS! (with a new game?) I don't understand how Apple handles this. If they would show more interest in gaming, they could offer a great library from Llamasoft & Co.
This is really too bad, Jeff made a number of fantastic games for iOS, and I hope he manages to get them re-released on another platform at some point. I think he was just as disappointed as we are - he reported that he just couldn't keep going on iOS production due the the fact that he wasn't making any money on it. At some point he let the license lapse and I'm sure Apple just removed the apps a period of time after that.
Isn't the annual license only $99? There must be a deeper story than a dev simply refusing to pay $99...?
I'm assuming they were doing well? TBF, the vast majority of devs on the iOS AppStore are lucky just to break even on their annual dev fee
