Apple removes Game Boy emulator iGBA from App Store due to spam content and infringement

According to news on April 15, Apple said today that it has removed the Game Boy emulator iGBA from the App Store because it violated the spam (Section 4.3) and copyright (Section 5.2) provisions of the company’s App Review Guidelines. However, Apple did not provide specific details.

Noted that iGBA was accused of plagiarizing developer Riley Testut’s open source work GBA4iOS. GBA4iOS has always been only available outside the Apple App Store. iGBA quickly rose to the top of the App Store rankings after its release last weekend, but social media is full of negative reviews of the app from users, who generally believe that iGBA is a poor copycat full of ads. “It seems that Apple actually approved a clone version of GBA4iOS,” Testut posted on the Threads platform. “I never authorized anyone to do this, but it now occupies the top spot on the charts (and is also stuffed) Full of ads and trackers)." He quipped, "Thank you so much for the existence of App Store review, which protects users from such scams and knockoffs." ##Not yet. It’s unclear whether Apple removed iGBA because it believed the app copied GBA4iOS. iGBA allows iPhone users to play Game Boy games by loading free ROMs downloaded from the web. ROMs for various games can be found online, and users who already installed iGBA before its removal can still use the app. Nintendo said on its U.S. customer support website that downloading pirated copies of its games is illegal. It's unclear whether Nintendo submitted a complaint to Apple about the iGBA and whether this was one of the factors that led to its removal. The following is an excerpt from Section 5.2 of the App Store Review Guidelines (the section about intellectual property): Make sure that your app only contains content that you have created yourself or that you have permission to use. If you cross the line and use unlicensed content, your app may be removed. This of course also means that if someone 'borrows' your work, their app may also be removed.

iGBA comes just over a week after Apple updated its App Store review guidelines to allow "retro console emulators" to go live. However, after iGBA was quickly removed from the shelves, it is still unknown which types of emulators Apple will give the green light to.

As for Testut, he developed another Nintendo game emulator called Delta, which is currently available outside of the Apple App Store. Delta will also be available on iPhone devices in the EU via AltStore, Testut's alternative app store. It's unclear whether Testut plans to put Delta on the App Store amid the new regulations.

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