The transition to iOS 11, the judgment of death to many video games

The new operating system of the iPhone no longer manages the applications in 32-bit. Unless updated, it will no longer work.

It's a goodbye little common. Not a loved one, but that of a video game on which many of the owners of the smartphone have ripped out the hair. "The Flappy Bird original is no longer playable on the latest iOS [since Tuesday, September 19] with the release of iOS 11. Thank you very much to have played and have supported it for the past four years. "

The message, posted on Facebook by the game developer Dong Nguyen, one of these applications that has maddened the world – it was in the beginning of the year 2014. Like him, these are myriads of games that no longer work on the latest mobile operating system from Apple.

As noted by many specialized websites, in the image of Mac World, iOS 11 does not manage the applications in 32-bit, unlike his predecessors. Unless updated by their authors, they will not be able to turn, that the user has paid or not for the download. "Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do to make refonctionner, many of them having been long since abandoned by their creators," notes the site, specialized in the news of the Apple products.

Read also : the menus of The iPhone and iPad are evolving with their new central software, iOS 11
180 000 applications to the abandonment

In addition to Flappy Bird, games as Religion Simulator-God Games, Kind of Soccer or Activision Anthology does not benefit from the update at the time of writing, no more than the application site video game Gamekult or the information site of the algerian French-speaking El Watan. In all, according to Business Insider, they are 180 000 services that are affected by this update the key.

Apple has not taken the developers a traitor : the manufacturer has introduced a 64-bit mode in its flagship phone as the iPhone 5S in 2013, and regularly warned that applications in 32-bit do not work on the later updates. But the transition to the new standard is not free, and rarely cost-effective for productions for which the bulk of the commercial life is already behind them.

"In fact, it is especially at the level of the catalogue that it's a problem," says the World's Michael Peiffert, the leader of the French studio Mi-Clos Studio (Out There). "For example, my game Space Disorder, of which the last update dates back to 2013, is no longer available in the App' Store because it would have cost me too expensive to make a 64-bit version. "A line of reasoning followed by several creators. As noted by Gizmodo, many classic from the Apple Store and had begun to disappear in recent months, as Peggle Classic or Ridiculous Fishing (the latter, recently updated, has re-emerged).
Puzzle for the conservation of the heritage

The logic of planned obsolescence Apple raises important questions in terms of continuity of service vis-à-vis buyers. And, incidentally, emphasizes the increasing difficulty of protecting the heritage of the video game to the digital era. "A lot of games have disappeared from the App' Store, which puts on the table the question of the archiving of digital works, which are supposed not to fall in decay with time, unlike a painting, " warns Michael Peiffert.

The video game, which has been seeking for years a museum, however, has seen several initiatives of conservatives in private or institutional work for the preservation of his memory. But they have few weapons to face this kind of situation.

"The classic solution is to keep all the major versions of the OS, but in the case of iOS, we are not able to maintain the system independent of the smartphone. We are counting on a medium term where emulators for iOS will be available ", hope Louise Fauduet, manager of the funds video game of the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand.

In the Face of the strategies of Apple, its means of action are weak, and would be greatly facilitated by an awareness. "For the moment, we collect under the legal deposit a portion of the applications published in France. We wish to intensify our action, and we would be pleased that issues of sustainability should be better taken into account in the whole chain of creation. "