Craig Grannell, writing for Stuff.tv:
Recently, I was asked by a games mag you’ve probably all heard of to write about Apple TV and gaming, largely from a development standpoint. As ever under such circumstances, I went through my list of email and Twitter contacts, seeing this as a good opportunity to offer some exposure to indie developers whose work I’ve enjoyed over the years. One response came back very quickly, albeit from a name I didn’t quite recognise. The message was in fact from a developer’s wife; the person I was trying to get in touch with had died the previous week.
The developer in question was Stewart Hogarth, who’d lost his battle with congenital heart disease; he was just 34. We’d only been in touch a few times, but I’d been captivated a couple of years ago by his truly excellent 8-bit tribute I Am Level for iOS and Android. This was a smart, charming, entertaining title that married eye-searing Spectrum-style graphics, old-school single-screen platforming challenges, and modern mobile tilt-based controls. It was still installed on all of my devices, and it was strange and very sad to think that the person who created it was no longer with us.
And:
Once a developer account lapses through non-payment, the apps are gone forever, which feels wrong.
Came upon this story in this post on MacStories.net, by Federico Viticci.
Federico says:
I genuinely believe that, years from now, apps and games will be studied as interesting data points and references for our society, behaviors, and sociological traits. Today, quite paradoxically, in many cases it’s actually easier to preserve physical media than digital app store (lowercase, as it applies to every company) content and developers’ back catalogues. Servers that eventually disappear, expired contracts, apps that are no longer supported on the latest OS – it doesn’t make much sense to me that the rules and limitations of software make it harder to preserve apps than something which physically decays.
I continue to believe that app preservation is a topic worth discussing, and Craig is touching on an important aspect of it.
If the developer of your favorite app stops paying for their developer account, when Apple cancels the account, do the apps immediately get pulled from the app store? Does Apple have a policy that covers this?
That’s very interesting article. From what I know, Facebook does allowed decease to be on FB as long as they receive death certificate? I think Apple should adopt Facebook’s policy. Not sure if this will help… https://www.facebook.com/help/103897939701143
An unsupported app isn’t worth much. Each future release of iOS will destabilize it a little (or a lot) more. If you’re a developer, you should probably arrange to pass on your apps somehow instead.
Rights to the app should change over to the surviving family members, surviving business partners, or however else that is stipulated in wills, contracts or business agreements, and state laws, I think? I’m not a lawyer. If so, it would seem whoever controls the app could take it over or sell it or pass it on as well.
Yup. But aside from the business partners case, handling it from there in a way that gets revenue to the family AND continues the product is probably beyond most normal people.
Which is why, I suppose, I’m essentially suggesting that solo developers have a discussion with some peers and plan things out a little. 🙂
There’s a first generation iPad out there with these things still on.
That’s a kind of hardware memorial.
Keeping the app in the store won’t really help. As Apple keeps updating iOS, it’ll most likely stop working after a few years. The real problem isn’t that Apple removes the apps from the app store, but that all apps have to be in the app store, and that DRM prevents any other way of copying and running apps.
Having said that, though, at least there is an (illegal) solution to that. Just circumvent the copyright, and run the old apps on an old jailbroken iPhone (and perhaps, in the future, in an emulator).
The problem is much worse when you consider games that mostly exist on servers in the Internet. Once the servers are turned off, the whole world inside the game is just gone forever.