Soon after the exchange, Itch.io’s Twitter feed jokingly claimed that Apple’s lawyers called and said to “turn off ALL the games,” then said Itch.io was renaming its “sensitive content” filter to “Unspeakable Games.” As I write this, one Itch.io user has announced a game jam called the “Unspeakable Jam” that will run until June 12th all entries must follow Apple executive Trystan Kosmynka’s instruction that “games have a beginning and end there’s challenges in place.” It’s where I post my own small text-based games, and there’s a thriving indie tabletop role-playing game community, among other genres.) Some people were upset at Apple going after a platform that’s particularly favored by queer developers offering depictions of sexuality you won’t find in big-budget games. (It’s got a lot of content that’s not safe for work, but it’s also by far the easiest place to publish experimental interactive media. Games Are Now ILLEGAL- itch.io May 7, 2021īut regardless of what happens in court, Itch.io is an independent entity with little direct stake in the trial, and its users are largely indie game designers who are often skeptical of both Epic and Apple. They said we need to turn off ALL the games “Itch.io is an incredible community for developers that we support fully,” Allison said, “they have an open platform, and therefore have different moderation standards than the Epic Games Store.” Allison demurred, although he later pushed back on Apple’s veiled suggestion that Epic kick Itch.io off the Epic Games Store. Judge Rogers seemed to take the concern seriously, asking Allison to explain whether Apple was correct. Apple witnesses have offered several conflicting definitions of that) onto the iPhone. Today, Apple essentially warned Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers that this would mean forcing Apple to indirectly allow a sexualized visual novel about incest (I’d call it a game, but Epic v. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app.” Epic is suing for the right to sideload alternative app stores like the Epic Games Store onto iOS. Until mid-2016, it told game developers that “if you want to criticize a religion, write a book. The list includes, per Apple’s attorney, a game called Sisterly Lust that includes “a list of fetishes which include many words that are not appropriate for us to speak in federal courts.”Īpple is notoriously wary of sexual or even debatably offensive content in its App Store.
It’s also, as we’ve previously described it at The Verge, “small and weird.” (Granted, it’s not quite as small as Epic seems to think CEO Tim Sweeney said it had “at least hundreds” of games, while the real number is upwards of 200,000.) Epic hasn’t reviewed all these games, and Apple noted that its standards are different from the Epic Games Store’s.
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Itch.io is one of relatively few non-game apps on the Epic Games Store, along with software like the Brave browser. On the fifth day of court, however, Apple tried to turn Itch.io into a liability - by telling Epic Games Store general manager Steven Allison about “so-called adult games” that were “so offensive we cannot speak about them here.”
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The Fortnite publisher was going to trial with the aim of making Apple offer competing app stores on its iPhone and iPad, so the move showed that Epic was willing to open up its own store in the same way. Apple trial, Epic Games made an interesting announcement: it would offer the indie game storefront Itch.io as an app on its own Epic Games Store.