Long-time Mac game developer Freeverse was one of the companies who ushered in gaming on the iPhone back in the device’s infancy. If you walk the halls of the TouchArcade archives from the 2008-2009 era, practically every other story was featuring some type of Freeverse game. In fact, even before the App Store officially opened in July of 2008, Freeverse had multiple titles in the works for iOS. Their hits were quite numerous: Flick Fishing, Slotz Racer, Warpgate, Skee-Ball, MotoChaser… chances are pretty good that if you were gaming on your iOS device in the early years of the App Store, you had a Freeverse game or two installed.
Being that Freeverse was so important to the Mac gaming scene, it was comforting to see them being similarly active on Apple’s mobile platform. Mac gaming is in a much better place nowadays thanks to the Mac App Store, a Mac version of Steam, and just a larger interest in general thanks to more and more people owning Mac computers, but back in the day it was a big deal to have a developer who consistently provided games for Mac. Nobody knew how crazy gaming would take off on the iOS platform, but it was nice to know that even if it hadn’t, there were developers like Freeverse out there making sure we had games to play on Apple’s latest device.
For an idea of how far we’ve come with iOS gaming, check out this extremely old hands-on video of Freeverse’s MotoChaser (when it was still called Wingnuts MotoRacer) from July 2008:
Of course, as we know now, the App Store absolutely exploded, and gaming became one of the dominant activities for iOS device owners. With apps and mobile devices being the “hot new thing", this placed a target on Freeverse’s back, as they were both in the door of the mobile world early and were prolific at releasing hit games on iOS. Another fast-rising star in the world of mobile was ngmoco, and following their second round of funding in early 2010, ngmoco announced almost immediately afterward that they had purchased Freeverse.
With Freeverse and Epic Pet Wars developer Miraphonic under the ngmoco umbrella, ngmoco turned itself into the hot property in the mobile space in 2010. In November of that year, their hotness lured Japanese mobile gaming giant DeNA into purchasing ngmoco for a cool $400 million. Unfortunately, it appeared that DeNA buying ngmoco was just a quick way for them to get a foothold in the Western mobile market, and all of the great work that Freeverse and ngmoco did in the early days of the App Store went by the wayside. Existing Freeverse/ngmoco games were reworked as free to play games and republished under DeNA’s Mobage brand. For the next couple of years, you didn’t hear much from Freeverse or ngmoco in regards to new games, and they even cancelled the planned release of Rolando 3, one of the biggest IPs in the world of iPhone gaming. It looked like two of the iPhone’s brightest stars were slowly dimming for good.
And that’s pretty much what happened. In early 2012 ngmoco was hit with layoffs, in August Freeverse co-founders Ian and Colin Lynch left the company they had created, and almost immediately afterwards Freeverse itself was hit with layoffs and it looked more than likely the studio would be shuttered. Today it looks like the final nail has entered the coffin as former Freeverse developer Bruce Morrison noted on Twitter that all Freeverse-published games have been removed from the App Store as well as from customers’ Purchase History.
Morrison, who currently develops games for his own studio Man Up Time, says that as early as just a few weeks ago he was able to re-download old Freeverse titles from the App Store, but that’s no longer the case. He speculates that the Freeverse developer license with Apple has lapsed, resulting in the games being taken offline. For what it’s worth, there are some Freeverse-developed games still available in the App Store if they were published under the ngmoco or Mobage brands, like Flick Fishing. But, if you’re like me and have fond memories of playing MotoChaser and Warpgate, those games appear to be gone forever unless you happen to still have them installed on your device.
To be frank, it’s not a massive loss seeing as none of those old Freeverse games have been updated in years and lack even basic features that are common now on iOS devices. Heck, I’m not even sure if any of them would work on iOS 8, and perhaps that’s ultimately the reason they’ve been taken down. Whatever the case may be, those who hold a special place in their heart for Freeverse from their Mac gaming experiences or on their iOS devices, it’s time to pour one out for these old games who shaped the early landscape of iOS gaming.
