MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands are currently the only Telltale Games available to purchase from the Apple App Store.
Eurogamer reports that The Walking Dead, Back to the Future, The Wolf Among Us, Jurassic Park and Sam and Max have all vanished. And not only are they not available to buy, they also seem to be MIA from purchase histories, meaning those who have paid for them in the past are unable to redownload them.
"If you are running iOS 9 on your iPhone or iPad, we are aware of an issue that causes missing sound or causes the game to freeze during connection, or crash," the studio’s support site said, although it sounds like the games are due for a return.
"Our team is currently investigating this issue, and we hope to have more information in the near future. During the investigation, we will be temporarily removing the affected apps from the App Store while we work to resolve these issues.”
A number of big-name apps have been disappearing not only from Apple’s storefront but also from purchase histories in recent weeks. The huge list, compiled by Pocket Gamer, includes titles from Konami, Sega, 2K Games and Capcom.
However, while some of these removals are deliberate due to compatibility issues with newer versions of iOS, there are now suggestions that perhaps some of it is down to an error with Apple’s systems.
In a separate report Pocket Gamer caught word from Tweetbot developer Paul Haddad. He found that upon retiring Tweetbot 3 from the store in favour of newer release Tweetbot 4, the older version was also pulled from purchase histories.
"That definitely didn’t happen before and is catching a lot of developers by surprise," he said. "I’m hoping it’s just a bug and not an unannounced change in policy." Apparently putting the app back up for sale in at least one region fixes the issue.
UPDATE: And it’s confirmed. An Apple spokesperson has told Pocket Gamer: "If [developers] remove their apps from the store, they cannot be redownloaded until the app has been resubmitted to the App Store."
