New game from Apple – but only for subscribers
Apple's emoji casual game announced at the WWDC developer meeting is available just in time for World Emoji Day this week. But not everyone will get it.
Emoji with Emoji Game: Unfortunately not for everyone.
(Image: Apple)
Apple rarely releases its own games. For years, every Mac has come with a chess game and a "Paper Boy" version for the iPhone was published as a gift for billionaire and Apple investor Warren Buffett. Apple is also (pre-)financing new titles from third parties as part of its Apple Arcade games service and recently bought a small games studio. But now there is once again an "Apple original game": just in time for World Emoji Day this week, the iPhone company launched its "Emoji Game". However, the distribution channel is quite special: it is only available in English-speaking regions (plus Quebec in Canada in French) and only for a subscription fee. It is not available in the regular App Store, as the casual title has been integrated into the News app.
Games like from the newspaper
Apple News+ is Apple's journalism offering, which bundles various magazines, newspapers and other photo and text content into one subscription. However, the company has not yet succeeded in rolling it out widely. Instead, News+ has only been (or still is) available in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia. In the USA, you now pay just under 13 US dollars for the service. "Emoji Game" also includes other mini-games that are more reminiscent of newspaper game pages, including Sudoku, crossword puzzles and the Quartiles puzzle.
However, "Emoji Game" also fits in well here: It's a guessing game with emojis. Words or phrases are shown with blanks that you have to fill in by describing an emoji. Among other things, you can learn how different the meanings of emojis can be.
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Brought forward to the emoji holiday
Apple showed "Emoji Game" for the first time at the WWDC 2025 developer conference in June. It was actually expected to be part of iOS 26, but the game was apparently brought forward for World Emoji Day. It remains to be seen whether it will also land in Europe at some point.
As mentioned, the minimum requirements are a News+ subscription and at least iOS 18.4. The Apple News app only appears on English-speaking devices plus French for Canada. Users report that the title also appears in the News app on iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 or higher.
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