Wow. It looks like someone made a Google Docs spreadsheet of existing iPhone applications breaking the TOS.
Some of these “sub-standard” applications appear to include:
- The popular Rolando 2 for breaking 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 (Lua interpreter)
- Zombieville, #1 in all Games for a while, a Unity3D game (breaking 3.3.1)
- Ravensword: The Fallen King, #1 in Role-Playing at one point, also a Unity3D game.
- Broken Sword, a top-selling RPG game, for apparently using the SCUMM scripting language
- And yes, it turns out that Tap Tap Revenge does indeed violate both 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 for using Lua
- Command & Conquer Red Alert and Star Wars The Force Unleashed both seem to interpret proprietary scripts, violating 3.3.2.
It will be interesting to see how Apple responds to this. If they ignore it, is that essentially a green light to break their TOS, so long as you’re not on their shitlist and your name doesn’t begin with an ‘A’ and end in ‘dobe’?
This type of selective enforcement and hypocrisy does not breed developer loyalty and trust, rather, it fosters animosity and FUD.
Just in case the Google Docs link goes down here’s a mirror: (PDF | XLS).
I am a freelance graphic artist working in the games industry. Many of my clients see the new agreement as detrimental to their business. Some will have to give up app development if this holds.
All I can say on their behalf is, keep fighting the good fight. This new agreement isn’t just bad business… It’s borderline criminal, since it will outright destroy assets of many parties that are neither Adobe nor Apple. There should be laws to keep this sort of damage from happening.
Thanks for the comments everyone, but there have been so many that I have to close the comments section, otherwise I’ll be moderating them all day and never get any work done.
I highly recommend these two articles from Ars Technica by Peter Bright, they have the best analysis and explanation of the situation that I’ve seen so far:
» A brief assessment of Jobs’s iPhone OS defense
» Apple takes aim at Adobe… or Android?