GYGO Mobile: Will Apple Ever Behave?

Hello, and welcome to another Wednesday! I downloaded a couple new games this week that, despite the horrible advertisements, I’m actually enjoying—Land Builder, a puzzle game where you rotate little pieces with trees or buildings or water on them to build a little map, and Doodle God, which satisfies my desire to methodically move things around. I’m easy to please.

The genocide in Palestine is ongoing. If you have the funds, consider donating to one of the rotating crowdfunding campaigns at Gaza Funds. The Palestinian Feminist Collective has a lot of excellent reading material to learn more about the conflict, as well as action items you can use any time. I found Steve Salaita’s “A Practical Appraisal of Palestinian Violence” to be a very insightful piece that explains the Palestinian response to decades of colonial violence from Israel—something that’s particularly valuable to have if you have people in your life who don’t understand why calling the October 7 attacks “unprovoked” is a misinformed stance.

Apple’s at It Again

According to a report in the Financial Times, sources say the European Commission believes Apple is out of compliance with the Digital Marketing Act (DMA) and will begin fining the company. The maximum fine is five percent of daily turnover, or, in Apple’s case, $50 million per day, provided they do not change their system. Meta and Alphabet are also under investigation for similar violations.

On June 24, the European Commission informed Apple that they were in breach of the DMA. According to their findings, Apple’s terms did not sufficiently allow developers to steer customers toward cheaper purchasing options and significantly restricted developers’ ability to include links, which violates the DMA. Apple’s fees were also beyond what was considered necessary under the DMA. Apple told the Financial Times that they believe their plan complies with the DMA.

But that’s not all! Apple also initially rejected the Epic Store twice in early July, claiming that Epic’s “Install” button was too similar to Apple’s “Get” button. Later, the same day that Epic Games Newsroom tweeted about the rejection, Apple accepted the previously rejected submission.

Apple also reversed an earlier decision to reject UTM SE, a classic software emulator, for inclusion in the App Store. The emulator is now available on iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.

India’s antitrust body, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) found that Apple was also in violation of rules for forcing developers to use its proprietary in-app purchase system. Apple countered that because Android devices are more popular in India, they were not guilty of wrongdoing. The investigation will be reviewed before a final decision, during which time Apple can respond. The final decision may result in fines and other obstacles for Apple.

Meanwhile, in the US, Google has asked a judge in California to deny Epic Games’ requests to make the Play Store less of a monopoly. Epic’s requests included providing third-party app stores (such as Epic’s own) access to the Google Play catalog of apps not available on their stores to allow for linking back; allowing Android owners to change ownership for apps installed through Google Play to apps installed from another store; and requiring Google to distribute third-party app stores through their own Play Store. Google stated that these requests gave third-party developers a free ride on their own program, cost too much, and could pose a security risk. Google’s Play store was ruled an illegal monopoly earlier this year in California. Epic has until this week to respond to Google’s statements about their requests.

The Babe with the Power (to Be Fucking Annoying)

Voodoo, publisher of some of the world’s stinkiest mobile games, has signed a partnership with audio ad company Audiomob to add—you guessed it—audio ads to the company’s games. Audiomob will provide ads for the top 50% of Voodoo’s games. These ads can be played during gameplay to allow players to keep playing rather than interrupting the flow, but, hear me out: they also sound fucking annoying? If my game starts blasting an ad while I’m doing my usual mobile gaming in the dentist office waiting room, I am going to delete that fucking game from my phone.

“The Audiomob SDK detects the device volume on both Android and iOS and our data shows over 75% of users have their volume above the 10% volume threshold, meaning the majority of users can be monetised,” said Audiomob co-founder and CTO Wilfrid Obeng, which sounds fucking terrible. Please don’t do this.

Meanwhile, Skillz, a mobile gaming platform, has filed a lawsuit against Voodoo for false advertising and unlawful conduct, including using words like “fair” and skill-based” in their ads. According to the lawsuit, Voodoo uses algorithms to fix outcomes and winning payouts, making the claims of skill false advertising. Anybody who’s seen a mobile game ad ever knows that they’re absolutely jam-packed with false claims, so maybe—maybe—we’ll finally see some of this shit stop.

Good news for Voodoo with that Audiomob partnership in light of the lawsuit—in-game advertising revenue is poised to hit around $148 billion in 2028. Jesus fucking Christ. That’s probably enough to pay off those potential legal fees, huh?

New Mobile Games I Might Actually Play

If you can pry the horrible stinkers from my hands, that is.

Roia, a peaceful puzzle game, is out now on iOS and Android for $2.99. It looks lovely.

Hot37 allows you to build little hotels! What more could you ask for? It’s out now for $4.99, but only for iOS, so I guess there is actually one more thing I could ask for.

Midnight Girl, a point-and-click adventure about stealing a diamond. It’s due out in September on both iOS and Android, and can be preordered now.

Thirsty Suitors, which I for some reason was getting crossed with Later Dates, is coming to Netflix Games, which means it will be available for free on mobile for Netflix subscribers.

Dreamy puzzle game Superliminal is due out on iOS and Android July 30 for $7.99, but the first two weeks after launch will have a 25% discount.

Looped, a video game adaptation of an animated short film about a black hole, love, and a time loop, is on its way to iOS for $2.99.

The beautiful and beloved Hyper Light Drifter Special Edition is out now on iOS and Android for $4.99! I haven’t played this but I sure do love the soundtrack.

Myst-like A Fragile Mind is out now for Android and iOS, containing tons of puzzles the developers say will “leave you screaming at us.”

In other news…

Game Freak, best known for being the studio behind the Pokémon series, has launched its first mobile exclusive—a new IP called Pand Land. Currently available only in Japan, the game has teams of players searching for treasure. The game was developed in partnership with WonderPlanet, another Japanese studio.

People are recreating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox. Depictions of real-world violence like this are typically forbidden by the games’ terms of service, but player-generated content popped up following the event regardless, including visual reproductions and game modes. Epic took action against the game modes and content in Fortnite, but clarified that a specific video was from content not actually published—only created—on the platform. A Roblox spokesperson told Aftermath that, provided the content created on its platform was not published but only captured for personal use or posting on social media, was not technically forbidden. It’s a thorny issue for these platforms, which don’t want to be associated with depictions of real-world violence (despite, you know, the in-game guns and violence) but also don’t want to totally restrict the kind of content being created.

In terrible news for fans of mobile romance games, Pixelberry, the studio behind Choices: Stories You Play, has been acquired by Series Entertainment, an AI games developer. Series Entertainment CEO Pany Haritatos implied that new chapters in the series will be made with AI technology. One of the things that made Pixelberry’s stories so interesting to me is that, despite some flaws, there’s a sometimes-complicated humanity to the characters—even in romance stories, there’s sometimes mention of serious social issues, as well as a diversity of characters, that made the game feel less like a guilty pleasure than some other mobile dating sims. Call me pessimistic, but I have a feeling that’s going to be considerably less prevalent with AI behind the helm, and I worry about the real writers who’ve worked on this stories and what that means for their jobs in the future.

Longtime players of Pokémon GO are unable to access one of the game’s eighth anniversary events. If players completed the “Distracted by Something Shiny” Special Research event back in 2020, the current event, which offers a number of items as well as a Shiny Celebi for a mere $5, is locked. Niantic did not respond to Kotaku’s request for explanation, but writer John Walker suggested that it may be because Celebi, a legendary Pokémon, is a unique creature rather than one of a number of its kind, but also noted that players are allowed to have both Shiny and non-Shiny versions of standard Pokémon. So what’s the deal, Niantic? We’ll probably never know.

Some Genshin Impact players are calling for a boycott of the game after the release of Natlan, a new nation in the game based on Latin America and featuring characters based on African deities. Despite the cultural connections, all of the characters appear to be white or light-skinned. A petition calling on Genshin Impact publisher miHoYo to “engage with indigenous cultural consultants,” among other things, has received almost 94,000 signatures as of writing, and some voice actors for the game have weighed in, asking for changes to the character designs and more respect for the cultural inspirations for the game’s characters.

Honestly, the headline on this next one (“Fans React As Angry Birds Seemingly Confirms Gay Bird Is Just An Ally”) was weird enough, but in actually reading the article I realized it goes even harder than that. For some time, fans of the Angry Birds franchise have read one of the titular angry birds, Chuck, as queer—until a Pride Month post from the official Angry Birds Twitter account featured the bird in front of the “Ally” flag, which, hilariously, exists. In explaining why people have read Chuck as queer, Kotaku offered two explanations: one, a scene from the Angry Birds movie where Chuck seems fixated on the ass of another male bird, and two, this incredible quote:

In the episode, Chuck and Angry Birds protagonist Red are locked in a cage by the evil pigs to make them fuck. This is not an exaggeration, this is literally what happens. They’re trying to get them to make an egg for them to eat. It’s a whole thing. But Chuck blushes at the notion rather than reacting with immediate anger, which some fans read as further evidence of him liking boy birds.

“Chuck and…Red are locked in a cage by the evil pigs to make them fuck,” is a real sentence I read with my own two eyes, and now you have, too. Happy (belated) Pride Month, everyone.