Apple caters to China by pulling thousands of "unlicensed" iPhone games:
Apple has told iPhone app developers that it "will start removing thousands of mobile games lacking government approval from its App Store in China next month," Bloomberg reported today, citing anonymous sources. "The decision ends the unofficial practice of allowing games to be published while awaiting authorization from the country's slow-moving regulators."
As Bloomberg notes, "China's regulators require all games that are either paid or offer in-app purchases to submit for review and obtain a license before publication, and major Android app stores have enforced such rules since 2016. But unapproved games have flourished on Apple's iPhone platform." The Apple policy change "clos[es] a loophole" that "allowed games such as Grand Theft Auto, whose gory depictions of violence are unlikely to ever pass muster with Chinese censors," to be available in China.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @06:28AM (1 child)
Alt-right radicalization still on schedule? Or no one really falling for that bullshit?
Can we get some more edge lords to tell us how hate is good, oppression is logical, and cherry picked facts without context are super obvious?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @10:56AM
Just watch CNN. Totally unbiased reporting of only facts.
(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday June 24 2020, @11:36AM (1 child)
I was given an original gen 1 iPad by work back in the day, they were trying to spend for tax deductions, everyone got one.
I still remember the joy of checking each day what apps had been released. There were 20 apps per day released on average. Nearly all were of a very high calibre and worth while downloading.
About a year later the shovelware started coming. Mostly copies of existing games, but this soon became an avalanche of rubbish just trying to cash in. This time they targeted everything, every game, every app in all the categories, how ever obscure.
It was too late at this point. App stores were all about the numbers. Windows Phone opened its app store and got lambasted for having only a few thousand apps vs Apples 100's thousands/millions. Microsoft realising that the numbers were more important than the quality, started promoting developers to its platform. I remember filling out the Microsoft developer agreement and mailing it off with my colleagues convince the new gold rush was upon us.
Funny thing is the iPad still works, cannot be updated, but has 100's of quality apps/games still that still work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @03:14PM
Why is that funny?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2020, @07:37PM
If you want to do business in a country, you have to follow that country's laws. The fact that this story with its outrage was posted at all demonstrates that Millennials never learned that you are not above the law. They think from the past years in the Western world that following the law is completely optional. Their personal sense of "justice" places them above any law.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday June 26 2020, @02:57PM
I enjoyed the original GTA (plus the London expansion), when they were colourful, sprite-based, with a top-down camera. I particularly enjoyed using my car to mow down those rows of yellow chicken things that paraded around the place: easy, fun points!
Years later, I moved to the Big City, and saw some Hare Krishna groups. That was awkward.