Long delays, minor rejections, outright outages – emulators are now allowed in Apple’s App Store, but they face quite a few hurdles. The most recent example: long-serving, open-source PSP emulator PPSSPP has been waiting a month for a bug fix update to be issued by Apple’s app reviewer, the frustrated developer has announced. Particularly absurd: while Apple has long approved updates to a similar, free version of PPSSPP, a new version of a version of the emulator is paid for to support the project that has been repeatedly rejected. Is done – frustrating for buyers too.
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Allegation of copyright infringement
So Apple’s testers argue that the Playstation Portable Console (PSP) is not allowed to be mentioned, it is also a spam app and there are potential copyright violations because the emulator allegedly contains “video game files”. At least these are the allegations in letters published by the developerTherefore their answers appear ineffective.
The PPSSPP developer says Apple’s complaints are completely false. It is also not clear why the free version was approved at the same time. He had already contacted Apple’s special office for App Store objection procedures, but that too yielded no results. “It’s just frustrating. I want to release bug fix updates and I can’t,” the developer said.
Emulators are a given on computers, but they weren’t on iPhones and iPads for a long time: Apple consistently denied such software access to iOS for more than a decade. After heavy pressure to open up platforms in the EU, game emulators are only allowed from spring 2024.
Emulators are also technically limited
Technically, apps remain restricted largely because they are not allowed to use just-in-time compilation. Flexible virtualizers like QEMU-based UTM can only virtualize older operating systems and only slowly. UTM specifically named its iOS version “UTM SE”, SE standing for “Slow Edition”. Apple also originally refused to notarize some emulators for sale in the EU outside the App Store – and only gave in much later. The iPhone company has recently blocked the Macintosh 128K emulator.
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