Following the announcement of Metal at WWDC, we’ve sort of been daydreaming about the amazing console-style games we’d see on the App Store with developers in iOS 8 soon being able to access the raw power of iOS devices. It didn’t help that Apple straight up boasted about console engines being able to run on the iPhone either. Well, fast forward to the release day of iOS 8 and Metal-supported games slowly drizzling out of the pipeline to see the cruel reality: Metal-enabled free to play island builders.

Rovio Stars’ Plunder Pirates (Free) just launched, and among other things, utilizes Metal if you’re running iOS 8 on a A7-enabled device capable of supporting Metal.

Now, I don’t mean to make this sound like I’ve got anything against Plunder Pirates. I don’t, for all I know it’s a great game, it’s just oddly amusing to me that among the first games we’re seeing come off the App Store conveyor belt that support Metal include the requisite free to play timer game.

I guess that’s the App Store for ya’.