Epic Games has removed all Infinity Blade games from the iOS store

[SlothmanAllen]

I had just purchased an iPhone 4 when this was released. I think the iPhone 4 had been out for a couple of months, around October 2010, and I remember Apple announcing this game. At the time it was really impressive! The graphics were far beyond anything available at the time. Epic also had a great demo for the Unreal Engine that allowed you to freely explore this medieval town they had created. I have very fond memories of this as a game.

 

[Hibiki]

Pushing hard for that iOS Epic Store, then?

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Pretty much

 

[DOBERMAN INC]

They'll retool them a little and and make the loop less IAP focused and be up on the Epic Store in no time.

 

[Border]

It's weird to me that they would yank these now, at this very moment. There's no major iOS upgrade that's causing them to have to abandon the games.

 

[OtherWorldly]

How does one trust a digital only future when publishers and developers can just yank a game from existence given no option to buyers. If this was a physical version somehow, you would always own it. Even if it had bugs you could always just play it. Not with this way of digital only. This spells trouble for future of game ownership. What if God of War becomes downloadable only. Sony just stops supporting it and pulls the game. Thousands haven't played and it and one just gets in the mood and realizes they can't because it's not available. Ever

 

[tmarg]

How does one trust a digital only future when publishers and developers can just yank a game from existence given no option to buyers. If this was a physical version somehow, you would always own it. Even if it had bugs you could always just play it. Not with this way of digital only. This spells trouble for future of game ownership. What if God of War becomes downloadable only. Sony just stops supporting it and pulls the game. Thousands haven't played and it and one just gets in the mood and realizes they can't because it's not available. Ever

Click to shrink...

By working with companies who have built up trust over several years by putting the customer first, even when distasteful practices have been deemed 'ok' elsewhere in the industry.

Stuff like, idk, buying third party exclusives to keep them off of competing storefronts.

 

[Th0rnhead]

"You may find Infinity Blade popping up in places you wouldn't expect."

So are they doing a remastered version or something? Why drop that line? Sounds like they're hinting at something.

 

[DOBERMAN INC]

"You may find Infinity Blade popping up in places you wouldn't expect."

So are they doing a remastered version or something? Why drop that line? Sounds like they're hinting at something.

Click to shrink...

They'll promote it in Fortnite and then have a relaunch to it's newly found audience.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

Yet again, we have proof that people need to step the fuck up when it comes to preserving mobile games. Because if a major early technical showcase for iOS can vanish off the face of the earth. Anything can.

To make matters worse, Epic does have a solution for bringing it to other platforms, thanks to their Chinese publisher.

An Xbox One version of Infinity Blade does exist, specifically based off the Chinese version of the game that includes content from all three games. It was released digitally back in 2015 only in China. Said Chinese version is also completely unaffected by this announcement, with it still being up on the app store as of right now.


(Here's a video of Donald Mustard talking about the Xbox One port, sourced from the official website.)

The publisher, Tencent. Owns a 40% stake in Epic itself, and still works with them in bringing Fortnite to China.

But the main thing here is that the baseline for bringing the game to other platforms, and in turn, preserving it. Already exists. With Epic only needing to fix things up by getting a hold of Tencents work.

 

[saenima]

Maybe they'll finally release them on Android now.

 

[Mike D]

I had Infinity Blade (the first one) installed so I started it up. Still plays on my XS Max, doesn't crash or anything. It's just not optimized for the display so it's pillarboxed but the controls are fine. I don't see why they couldn't just leave this on the app store if it runs on the latest device and iOS 12.

 

[Kapryov]

Whoa, blast from the past.
I finally sorted out replacing my phone with an iPhone 4 on the 10th of December, waaaay back in 2010. I ended up buying Infinity Blade either that day or a few days after to see what the fuss was about. I don't remember the game at all now, but this is sad. Why not just leave it up if it still works?

 

[dex3108]

How does one trust a digital only future when publishers and developers can just yank a game from existence given no option to buyers. If this was a physical version somehow, you would always own it. Even if it had bugs you could always just play it. Not with this way of digital only. This spells trouble for future of game ownership. What if God of War becomes downloadable only. Sony just stops supporting it and pulls the game. Thousands haven't played and it and one just gets in the mood and realizes they can't because it's not available. Ever

Click to shrink...

You can remove game from Steam Store but you can't remove game from users library (unless game is activated with stolen key or something like that). Some companies worked for years to build trust.

 

[Jobbs]

How does one trust a digital only future when publishers and developers can just yank a game from existence given no option to buyers. If this was a physical version somehow, you would always own it. Even if it had bugs you could always just play it. Not with this way of digital only. This spells trouble for future of game ownership. What if God of War becomes downloadable only. Sony just stops supporting it and pulls the game. Thousands haven't played and it and one just gets in the mood and realizes they can't because it's not available. Ever

Click to shrink...

People who already bought it can still play it and download it.

And good. Epic made a smart and understandable decision

 

[Matt C.]

This is terrible. I'm glad I have all three.

 

[gozu]

Man, fuck digital games.

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With the exception of GoG games, and other DRM-free pc games, of course.

 

[Candescence]

Another reason why mobile is a terrible platform for gaming - even Epic doesn't want to bother with the bullshit vendors throw at them.

I really do hope the trilogy is remastered or even remade for consoles and PC, however, with a different progression system and more in-built story. Infinity Blade always felt like it was too ambitious for the platform it was made for, especially taking the books by Brandon Sanderson into account. The actual gameplay is basically "Punch-Out with swords", which is fun but can get repetitive and isn't as smartly designed as Punch-Out, particularly with some enemies who have attacks that don't actually indicate how you're supposed to defend against them properly.

... Actually, now that I think about it, expand the variety of locations and enemy types, and the Infinity Blade trilogy could be retooled into short Soulslike games pretty easily. The first game even has a really hard final boss fight in the form of the God King who you need to challenge repeatedly and defeat through both improved skill and better stats and equipment.

 

[Catshade]

What, are they going to pull classic Unreal games from other digital stores too?

 

[TheUnseenTheUnheard]

Where is Tim Sweeney these days?

 

[Executive Taxi]

With the development of Spyjinx and other projects, it has become increasingly difficult for our team to support the Infinity Blade series at a level that meets our standards.

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I do wish they were more specific because I can't think of anything on the App Store that could mean more development for these games unless they're talking about support for notched phones

 

[RM8]

Another reason why mobile is a terrible platform for gaming - even Epic doesn't want to bother with the bullshit vendors throw at them.

Click to shrink...

Games get pulled on consoles too, though.

 

[LAA]

Wow. End of an era indeed. How sad it's still considered one of the best mobile games and kinda one of the earliest.
I hope this finally means an android port, I'd be so happy, but I dont understand why they'd remove from iOS store to do that. It sounds like they may port to PC from the comment, but again it just seems.. mean to remove from iOS, why even bother.

EDIT: Oh they don't work on newer phones? Guess that may explain it then. If theyre porting to android though surely the effort to do that they might as well enable the game to work on newer models though.

 

[Candescence]

What, are they going to pull classic Unreal games from other digital stores too?

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Not really. Unlike mobile games, console games and PC games are basically gonna work as you'd expect, and if they don't in the case of newer PC hardware and operating systems, there are ways to fix compatibility issues without any effort on the original developer's part.

Console makers have a vested interest in making sure updates don't break existing titles. Apple and Android vendors, though? Haha, nope, they don't give a shit, and expect devs to support as many devices as possible and keep up with whatever software-breaking shit they put in their updates. At some point, a game is making too little money to be worth updating to newer operating system versions and devices, and devs just pull the plug entirely.

Games get pulled on consoles too, though.

Click to shrink...

Usually only due to licensing bullshit (which covers a specific subset of games), rather than game-breaking device updates.

 

[Golvellius]

It's Apple's fault for changing the API all the time and then telling developers to cope with it. Removing 32-bit compatibility was beyond scummy. Epic did the right thing, and other developers should do the same.

 

[Buttchin-n-Bones]

Man, this bums me out. I fucking loved this series. Grinded the hell out of all three, at least like 40+ rebirths each (probably more than that, I did the NG+ option several times). Even bought the two Sanderson novellas.

Would love a remake.

 

[ucanadam]

Why people say you can only download apps from appstore when you can downloaf ipas from browser ?

 

[TheMadTitan]

From what I understand, you can sideload apps on iOS now without a jailbreak, so they might not explicitly need the App Store. Android will work like normal since you don't need to use Google Play.

Either way, phone people get the majority of their stuff from the default app store and don't deviate from defaults like they do on desktop or laptops, so this is a dumb move.

 

[Mike D]

EDIT: Oh they don't work on newer phones? Guess that may explain it then. If theyre porting to android though surely the effort to do that they might as well enable the game to work on newer models though.

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I just tried the first game on my XS Max and it worked perfectly fine, pillarboxing aside.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

Eh what what? Can we at least redownload them for those who own them?

Edit : It seems we can. i wished that they would at least have given them for free for a limited time before removing them.

 

[Shadow]

From what I understand, you can sideload apps on iOS now without a jailbreak, so they might not explicitly need the App Store. Android will work like normal since you don't need to use Google Play.

Either way, phone people get the majority of their stuff from the default app store and don't deviate from defaults like they do on desktop or laptops, so this is a dumb move.

Click to shrink...

You can indeed sideload with a desktop application called Cydia Impactor. It signs the IPA for you with your iTunes/Apple account the same way Xcode does it. The problem is that the signing only lasts 7 days before you have to resign it because it's made to just test your development apps. (Used to be a year, but Apple changed it because too many people were using it for pirated apps).

 

[Cameron122]

The first game had a glitch where the IPhone X's specs weren't read properly so the game played at lowest settings. I hoped it was gonna be patched :( my favorite phone games. Even read a Brandon Sanderson novella about them. Hope it gets ported or rebooted some day.

 

[Wulfric]

"for the foreseable future"



Man, fuck digital games.

Click to shrink...

It's not like you can buy App Store games on a cartridge. What are you gonna do, not download anything?

 

[The Spoony Hou]

Stuff like this is why I'll never spend money on mobile games, the support is just trash. Other reason is I'll do my damnedest to never play anything on a mobile phone.

 

[JackOfSomeTrades]

So just to clear something up, it is possible to distribute apps on iPhone without jailbreaking and without going through the App Store, I do it myself. Basically you trust a certificate from a publisher, then visit a webpage and download.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/

It's a bit unclear how Epic would handle this but there are already many "stores" for pirated copies of apps from various Chinese companies.

 

[degauss]

Isn't that title a bit dramatic? You can still download it if you already bought it, they just don't want to sell new copies and support the games going forward.

I don't blame them when probably 99.99% of their money is from fortnite, remember they also dropped unreal tournament recently.

Also, were these games even good? I played the first one for a bout 5 minutes and it seemed super simple and boring.

 

[OgTheEnigma]

Ok, I've just found out that these games weren't released on Android. This really sucks from a game preservation perspective.

 

[Alexious]

My main takeaway on this is the focus of SPYJINX. I've been eager to learn more about that project since it was announced, it is long overdue for a reveal.

 

[dabri]

My main takeaway on this is the focus of SPYJINX. I've been eager to learn more about that project since it was announced, it is long overdue for a reveal.

Click to shrink...

Chair got pulled to work on fortnite. Spyjinx is vaporware.

 

[Alexious]

Chair got pulled to work on fortnite. Spyjinx is vaporware.

Click to shrink...

This very announcement says otherwise. Besides, Fortnite was also considered to be vaporware for a long time. We know how that turned out.

At Epic we strive to put players first and to provide a supported, full-fledged experience in every game we publish. With the development of Spyjinx and other projects, it has become increasingly difficult for our team to support the Infinity Blade series at a level that meets our standards. "The Infinity Blade series will always hold a special place for me personally and for Epic as a whole," Donald Mustard, Global Creative Director, said, "It's always bittersweet to say goodbye, but we are excited for Spyjinx and what the future holds!"

 

[LiK]

Glad I own all of them already.

 

[TheRed]

Damn this reminds me of them just taking away Paragon. Shit still hurts, also Unreal is dead. If they ever start up another big project outside of Fortnite I will be very weary of getting attached to it because if it doesn't pull in the money like Fortnite does they will just give up on it and completely erase it.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

This is why people are concerned about video game archival.

These versions of the games may no longer be playable at all in the near future, beyond just not being available for new players on ios. :/

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It's a particularly big problem on iOS because downgrading iOS devices is completely impossible. So if an iOS version breaks a game you are really dedicated to playing, finding non-updated hardware is going to be a huge challenge, if not impossible.

Yet again, we have proof that people need to step the fuck up when it comes to preserving mobile games. Because if a major early technical showcase for iOS can vanish off the face of the earth. Anything can.

Click to shrink...

In the case of iOS, what exactly would you suggest people do?

This is the problem with such a locked down platform. iOS software and hardware relies on server-side verification at a very fundamental level. There's basically no way to circumvent that long term, and not for lack of trying.

 

[Pixel Grotto]

This is pretty shitty. These were the only mobile games I ever thought were worth a damn. I even read the mediocre Brandon Sanderson tie-in e-books.

The smart thing to do would be to remaster the series and stick it on Epic Store. I hope they're doing that; it'd be an easy buy for me.

 

[VG Aficionado]

So, ports incoming?