Apple revokes Game Boy emulator from the App Store

The start of Apple’s new App Store policy for retro game emulators has turned out to be rocky after it had to remove the Game Boy emulator iGBA.

Apple discarded the iGBA emulator from its App Store due to an infringement of App Review guidelines on spam and copyright.

iGBA is a replica version of the GBA4iOS app created by Riley Testut. The developer shared the news about the copy on his Threads account.

“So apparently Apple approved a knockoff of GBA4iOS – the predecessor to Delta I made in high school – in the App Store,” shared Testut, specifying that he didn’t give permission to do so. GBA4iOS’s creator lamented seeing iGBA at the top of the App Store charts.

Testut insisted he doesn’t hold a grudge against the iGBA developer Mattia La Spina, however said he was unhappy with how Apple handled the whole situation.

It took some time for the company to set the rules to allow emulators. However, they did approve a replica of an emulator created for iOS more than ten years ago.

What gave it away that iGBA was a knockoff? Those who tried the new emulator soon learned that the app contains ads and tracks the user’s location.

Apple said it would allow retro game emulators on its App Store at the beginning of April this year.