Then why tell us it's getting updated only weeks before pulling support. Let's also not make this an issue about f2p vs premium. Maybe you should read Shaun's tweets about not blowing this issue out of proportion. This is about one company's shitty behavior, not a debate on digital distribution models.
I don't feel ripped off. I should've played it earlier. I feel deceived, and I would like an explanation.
It's not about free to play versus premium it's about developers addressing the requests of the market. iOS gamers straight up demand the following things: -Updates forever. -Endless new content. -Games to work on every device released, and every iOS update released. -A price tag as close to $0 as possible. This just doesn't work when you're only getting paid once. Game development doesn't take place in a magical land where everything is free- Margins are razor thin and old school developers trying to exist in this marketplace are getting pinched the hardest. It's just wholly unrealistic to have these kind of expectations for a game that is this old.
And I'm not talking about eternal support. I know that's not feasible. I'm talking about saying one thing and doing another. Making promises that you shortly thereafter break. To me this is an issue of honesty and accountability. If they had actually just dropped the game after the iOS issues surfaced I would be fine. I'd feel stupid for not having finished the game in the two years I owned it. But that's not what happened.
That seems like it's what they're doing, although it's in the most ridiculous way possible. It seems to be a side effect of having three different offices (NA, EU, and Japan) all trying to figure out what they're going to say. We see this a lot with bigger publishers... It's usually just figured out before the community catches wind of it and is done via internal emails and not customer support drones.
It worked fine on iOS 7, as did Jet Set Radio. The hard work had been done, both games ran fine on the redesigned Apple OS. There will be a few lines of code or something simple stopping these games from loading. If I'd had an iOS 6 device, bought and playes the games on there, skipped iOS 7, and come back to iOS 8 and tried to play them without success ... ok, fair enough. But in the case of Jet Set Radio, where SEGA went all out (well, Blit Software went all out on SEGA's behalf) to code a 60fps, HD, MFi enabled, iOS 7 compatible version of the game and then drop it because it crashes at the GameCenter log in screen? That's not right. I mean, given what SEGA have become and what they've been on route to becoming for a long time (ie: irrelevant), I'm not overly surprised, just disappointed. Jet Set Radio actually "hurt" (for lack of a better word) more than TWENY did from my own point of view. Having SoulCalibur, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Chu Chu Rocket on my iPad Air was like carrying around my favourite Dreamcast games. JSR was a wonderful port, especially using the MFi controllers. I see your point, and I say again I'm not asking for frequent free updates. But for it to not run on iOS 8 when it ran fine on iOS 7 is simply ridiculous and lazy and extremely unfair to people show loyally shelled out for the titles at full price. I support premium gaming, I always have and always will. But this stings, this really stings. Of course, if Apple just let us run whatever compatible version of iOS on our devices that we wanted, this wouldn't matter ...
Weird, though. If a jailbreak community figured out how to fix this app on iOS 8, why wouldn't SE just fix it quickly and rerelease it and say they will no longer be updating it?? They missed out on my sale. I was waiting for the next time I had over 2GB free to buy this one, but I guess I missed out. Oh well. At least they've continued support for some of their old-school titles.
Squeenix is a very large company, which is both good and bad. You're seeing the bad side here, as often in large studios decisions on where development budgets are going through multiple levels before getting signed off on. A ten minute fix in the jailbreak world could be weeks of meetings in a large studio, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me if at some point up the chain someone said "We're selling three copies a day, who cares."
First, I don't need new content... Just want to play it on my device.. This is another thing I hate about new iOSes... Dunno why they have to change how they load the app... If only the have backwards compability.. Second, An active developer updating their old games to run on newer ios device and put a little advertisement about the game should make some more sales right? And having an iAPs that doesn't needed to enjoy the game makes a way for fans to throw some money for the devs for the update.. Maybe that's only achiveable in a perfect world..
As has been said before, there's likely to be much more involved with getting an app fixed and approved through Apple than there is for what amounts to a group of hackers sidestepping Apple's procedures and software. Otherwise I would agree with you. This is why I want an explanation. To put and end to these interminable suppositions. What happened that got the wires so badly crossed?
That's the thing though, it shouldn't matter if you're only selling 3 copies a day when you sold 100,000 copies six months ago. TWEWY was ... £12.99? On iPad. 100,000 x £12.99 = £1,299,000 minus Apple's 30% of £389,700 giving a total of £909,300 to Square. Do those customers not deserve to be able to enjoy the game they bought? I mean what if someone doesn't follow these forums closely? What if someone had an iPad 2 or 3 running iOS 7 but it broke or gets stolen and they loved TWEWY. They get a brand new iPad Air 2 for their birthday and install TWEWY only to find it doesn't work and then find out it never will. Customer comes first. You should care about those who have bought before just as much as you do about those who will.
My question then is how many years of support does your original purchase buy you? If TWEWY doesn't worked with iOS 8, would you be upset if it doesn't work with iOS 9 next year 3.5 years out from the original release? If it worked with iOS 9 what if it didn't work with iOS 10 4.5 years out? At what point do you say, "Alright, I should've played this game by now, I can't really be mad that it doesn't work anymore.?" 5 years? 10 years?
You're making it seem like the developer of the fix used some dark magic when it was actually a very simple fix. Of course he had to change some things in the phone's files (creating symlinks), but that's because he simply didn't have access to the game's code. The only thing that's preventing the game from working is that iOS 8 changed some paths. If you were the developer and thus had access to the game's code all you would need to do to fix the game would be to change some paths. That should be fairly easy. The only thing that would take some time to do would be testing the game. The thing I don't understand here isn't just SE going "we'll update", "nah jk lol", "wait, yes, we're gonna update it!!!", "hahaha, you fell for it again lmao", but how they are destroying their own image just for such a simple fix. The news already hit some not-only-about-iOS sites.
What I'd do is be smarter from now on. Update my devices to the new OS on day one and test all my games. If any favourites don't work, revert back to the previous OS while the ipsw is still being signed. In the case of TWEWY, SE said they'd update it then pulled the rug out from under everyone's feet. This is why digital distribution will never come to console gaming and why I'll always prefer owning a physical copy.
...Digital distribution has come to console gaming, everything I have on my Wii U and PS4 is from their individual digital markets...
So you think someone paying £12.99 for a game should only "entitle" you to it LOADING on two versions of iOS? I'm not saying updated with features, I mean merely loading. There's plenty of other games out there that run on iOS 5, 6, 7, and 8 ... I don't believe for a second that it takes the amount of work you're suggesting for mere compatibility.
I think when you buy something it should work at the time and on the platform you originally bought it for. Expecting anything more than that is a great way to be disappointed.
