"Apple doesn't care about us": why a successful indie developer doesn't want to deal with iOS
Founder of the indie studio Spiderweb Software Jeff Vogel (Jeff Vogel) deleted my latest game from iOS. The remaining projects will have the same fate after a while. The indie developer told about the reason for this decision in an interview with Venturebeat.
Vogel admits: “The most important thing I realized about Apple products is that they are designed to lose relevance very quickly. Apple engineers are constantly updating both hardware and software. I have repeatedly come across the fact that any device older than two years loses the ability to interact with new OCS.”
Jeff Vogel, founder, programmer, game designer of Spiderweb Software studio
The indie developer believes that programming for Apple devices means constantly “learning anew and making corrections to everything.”
Sometimes, as a result, more advanced devices and software are obtained. And sometimes it’s just a set of meaningless gestures. And neither developers nor users benefit from them. “You live with it until one day you give up,” states Vogel.
The main problem, he is sure, is that “Apple doesn’t care.” Hundreds of games a day appear in the company’s store. Therefore, there is no shortage of developers. “I think Apple will only be happy if 90% of the developers just fall off one day,” Vogel concludes.
However, for a long time the developer managed to cope with these difficulties.
The last straw was the release of the Avernum 2 game. It was created and tested on iOS 8.2. A couple of days before its launch, iOS 8.3 was released, and this led to serious breakdowns in the game.
“I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. And even if I could, it would still not be possible to start the game normally. Version 8.4 would break everything again, or 8.5, and I wasn’t sure I could fix the code again and again, because every time Apple forces me to write it almost from scratch,” Vogel said.
So the developer, who has been creating games for Apple operating systems for more than 20 years, decided to give up and no longer deal with the company. He does not rule out that he will return someday, but definitely not in the near future.
Asked what reaction he expects from the developer community, Vogel replies: “I’m sure some will start saying, ‘What a moron in general. And noob. And a loser. He’s a hundred times worse as a developer than I am.” Maybe it’s all about me. My main area of expertise is design. I am, in general, not a particularly good coder. I made the game work fine on my key platform, and then I was distracted by the next major task. This is [Spiderweb Software, – approx. editors] in general, there was a small family business. If we could afford to work on iOS, the problem would not have arisen.”
“Sometimes it happens that what you do is no longer worth the effort. If you are in business, you should understand when such a moment comes and be able to make unpopular decisions,” he concludes.
A source: http://venturebeat.com
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