Apple's App Store often a nightmare for emulators
On paper, emulators are allowed in the App Store, but in practice Apple likes to stand in the way. Developers and users alike are annoyed.
Burnout Dominator im PSP-Emulator PPSSPP.
(Image: Entwickler)
Long delays, petty rejections, complete blockades – Emulators are now allowed in Apple's App Store, but they encounter considerable adversity. The most recent example: the long-standing, open-source PSP emulator PPSSPP has been waiting for a month for a bug fix update to be released by Apple's app reviewers, according to the frustrated developer. Particularly abstruse: While Apple has long since waved through the update for an identical, free version of PPSSPP, the new version for a paid version of the emulator to support the project is repeatedly rejected – frustrating for buyers too.
Allegation of copyright infringement
Apple's auditors claim, for example, that the mention of the Playstation Portable console (PSP) is not permitted, that it is a spam app and that there are possible copyright infringements because the emulator allegedly contains "video game files". At any rate, these are the accusations in the letters published by the developer. His answers therefore seem to come to nothing.
Apple's complaints are completely false, emphasizes the PPSSPP developer. Why the free version was approved in parallel long ago also remains an open question. He has already contacted Apple's special office for App Store appeals, but this has also come to nothing. "It's just frustrating. I want to release the bug fix update and I can't," says the developer.
Emulators are a matter of course on computers, but for a long time they were not on iPhones and iPads: Apple consistently denied such software access to iOS for over a decade. Only since spring 2024 – after massive pressure to open up the platform in the EU – have game emulators been permitted.
Emulators also technically limited
Technically, the apps remain massively restricted because they are not allowed to use just-in-time compilation. Flexible virtualizers such as the QEMU-based UTM can therefore only virtualize old operating systems, and even then only slowly. UTM has renamed its iOS version "UTM SE", the SE stands for "Slow Edition". Apple originally even refused to notarize some emulators in order to distribute them in the EU outside the App Store – and only relented much later. Just recently, the iPhone company blocked a Macintosh 128K emulator.
(lbe)
