The weekend’s soap opera featured iGBA. The first GameBoy emulator to be released on the App Store. As we saw last night, it became the third most downloaded free app on the Apple Store, but disappeared completely after a few hours.

And there is no. This isn’t just because it’s an emulator. According to the developer of the original emulator on which iGBA is based, both SPAM and violation of copyright laws were the main reasons.

What was iGBA?. iGBA left its mark on iOS before and after during the hours it was active on the App Store. After Apple was forced to accept emulators in the App Store, the first GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance emulator, iGBA, was released last Sunday.

On the one hand, the emulator allowed something unusual: running any .gbc or .gba ROM from Files. You just had to download any game from our browser, open it from downloads and automatically open the application. iOS recognizing ROM files is something that has never been seen before.

On the other hand, it integrated the search into the application to make it easier for the users. This part was a bit complicated: The game didn’t have a ROM repository, but it did let you search for ROMs via Google. Technically, this technique is not illegal: We were searching through Safari, not the emulator.

iGBA interface.

How did iGBA work?. iGBA’s interface and usability were outstanding and simple. An emulator that saves in its list the ROMs we have installed, offers the possibility of installing cheat codes, and a fast speed mode for classics, where this faster execution is appreciated in some classics.

Actually, I’m not hiding, just yesterday I was playing Pokémon Radical Red, a PokéCommunity Fangame that I’ve been following for a long time, with this emulator.

Why did he disappear?. This morning we woke up to the news: iGBA has disappeared from the App Store. Riley Testut, developer of the open source GBA4iOS project, complained on Threads that Apple allowed a developer to publish a “knock-off” copy of its emulator and flood it with ads.

This is a sensitive issue. In fact, iGBA was nothing more than an adaptation of GBA4iOS. But exactly GBA4iOS is an open source projectSo it was only a matter of time before someone relied on him for their own projects.

“To be clear, I’m not mad at the developer.
What pissed me off was that Apple went to the trouble of changing the App Store rules to allow emulators and then approved a fake of my own app even though I was ready to launch Altstore with Delta. “Since March 5”.

In fact, the developer states that on March 5, the GBA4iOS-based emulator will be published through its own application store, AltStore, without an advertising model but with paid applications.

Is the key here? In response to The Verge, Riley Testut stated that his app uses the GNU GPLv2 license. It is alleged that IGBA will not refer to this license and therefore violate its terms. The developer claims that Apple removed iGBA for violating sections 4.3 and 5.2 of its App Review Guidelines (spam and copyright).

There will be more emulators. iGBA is the first emulator released on the App Store, but there are more to come. Emulators are no longer banned on the Apple App Store, so there is an open path for a race where many developers will fight to offer the best free emulator.

Amid Android’s debacle with emulators due to Nintendo’s demands, finding a completely legal alternative is no easy matter. Emulators are not illegal: downloading copyrighted content and running it without paying, yes.

Image | iGBA

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