What a joke. Been trying to play some of these games. A pop up appears saying they won’t be supported anymore as they’ll be discontinued but you can still play offline fair enough second you close down the pop the game crashes completely what a joke. Got loads of these mega drive conversions and have enjoyed them and now this. Not even being able to play them is frustrating as anything
It’s the same kind of joke as when a game gets removed and becomes unplayable because of an iOS update or similar, or even when a game gets directly removed from your purchase history because the developer decided they were removing it completely from Apple ecosystem. I guess this is mobile gaming, and the unacceptable has to be accepted… I don’t know if this is the same with eShop games when the developer stops selling it for the Nintendo Switch, but it’s frustrating to say the least.
Yeah it’s so frustrating. Don’t get me wrong I presume the games didn’t generate enough revenue and they gave up on it. The constant Apple iOS updates break certain games (look at that castlevania style game by Netease which crashes when it starts) and they don’t help at all like you say it’s sad. At some point in the future many of the games I’ve bought won’t work as I’m sure some future iOS update will kill the game and if that game generates 0 dollars now it won’t get updated sad !
Sometimes they stores require the games to make certain updates to keep up with policy or else they get taken down. iOS / Android updates require certain games to make technical changes and sometimes it just isn't worth it to keep them up to date if they don't earn well. In the case of companies sometimes they'd need to rehire their old devs or sometimes the devs aren't under contract anymore or they hire new ones who would understand how to update the project. This is why mobile game preservation sadly isn't feasible most times. In my games at least all major games are still going even the very ones (games released 2017, 2018, etc.)
This is why I’m fine with emulators. Before I had my phone jailbreaked ages back and was fine playing old roms from 30 years ago or longer I then go ‘legal’ and buy these Sega apps (I bought the IAPs to get rid of the ad’s and to give the company/devs some revenue) and this happens. I buy lots of SNK apps but as others have said before you don’t own the game it’s more like you rent the game just want to be able to play lots of old retro games on my phone. Way too late for me to swap but sometimes I think I should have gone down the android route ! obviously I don’t know the code to the games but I’ve got old apps untouched by indie devs for years and they seem to stand the test of time for years. Then you get these Sega apps (probably with large teams working on them) crashing non stop !
