Apple Removes Game Center App From iOS 10 Developer Beta [Updated]

[MacRumors]

Six years after making its debut in iOS 4, Game Center has now been quietly removed from Apple's mobile operating system, as a few initial iOS 10 beta testers have noted. Although the company has given users the ability to delete some of its pre-installed apps with the new OS, it appears Game Center in particular is permanently deleted. It is unclear, however, whether the app might be made available to download from the App Store when iOS 10 goes public this fall.

As pointed out by MacRumors' sister site TouchArcade, Game Center is still not completely gone away as a service. In the release notes for the first beta of iOS 10, Apple explains that if a developer wants Game Center-like leaderboards in their app, they will have to implement such features themselves.

o The Game Center app has been removed. If your game implements GameKit features, it must also implement the interface behavior necessary for the user to see these features. For example, if your game supports leaderboards, it could present a GKGameCenterViewController object or read the data directly from Game Center to implement a custom user interface.
o A new account type, implemented by the GKCloudPlayer class, supports iCloud-only game accounts.
o Game Center provides a new generalized solution for managing persistent storage of data on Game Center. A game session (GKGameSession) has a list of players who are the session's participants. Your game's implementation defines when and how a participant stores or retrieves data from the server or exchanges data between players. Game sessions can often replace existing turn-based matches, real-time matches, and persistent save games, and also enable other models of interaction between participants.

When it was introduced, Game Center was presented as a way for users to visit a centralized hub of all of their gaming applications on iOS, although not every game supported Apple's app. Game Center provided profiles, achievements, leaderboards, status updates on friends' most recently played games, and a specialized "Turns" tab to keep track of games that used asynchronous multiplayer features.

Apple appears to be addressing multiple user issues with its stock apps in the iOS 10 developer beta, allowing for the removal of over 20 of its first party applications, a long-requested feature many users have been asking for over the past few years.

Read up on more iOS 10 features in our tidbits post here.

Update: As one user has pointed out on Twitter, "Game Center" was mentioned in name during the watchOS 3 section of the keynote. What this means for the future of the service, on either iOS or watchOS, is still unclear.

Update 2: Apple has confirmed to TechCrunch that "Game Center will continue as a service, but it will no longer be available as a standalone application."

Article Link: Apple Removes Game Center App From iOS 10 Developer Beta [Updated]

 

[jbachandouris]

Never used it. Never wanted it. Glad it's gone.

Find My Friends needs to become optional again.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Never used it. Never wanted it. Glad it's gone.

Find My Friends needs to become optional again.

I use it fairly often, to play online games of SSG2 and Doodlejump against my friends. I'm sure other apps use it too, so it would be sad to see it go.

 

[goodcow]

Good.

 

[Kaibelf]

I use it fairly often, to play online games of SSG2 and Doodlejump against my friends. I'm sure other apps use it too, so it would be sad to see it go.

As long as it's optional it's better. Many considered it clutter.

 

[Jayson A]

FINALLY! I hate game center!

 

[Dilster3k]

Good riddance, but my friends and I did use it a long time ago.

 

[2457248]

will this teach them never ever again to create a social platform?
is this ping 3.0? 2.0 being apple music's artist feed (i don't even know what it was called)

 

[CarpalMac]

I like it and use it to see what games my friends are playing. It's a better way of finding stuff than having to try and use the App Store search.

 

[MH01]

Interesting . Part of me wished it remained and Apple invested more in gaming . Though for many it was bloat ware

 

[Mactendo]

First they ruin it then kill it.

 

[keysofanxiety]

First they ruin it then kill it.

Yeah, it had a lot of potential. Basically, use Apple's servers and built-in tools to enable multiplayer functionality. Far easier than having to maintain your own servers and set up multiplayer to run through that. Really useful for smaller developers.

 

[Regbial]

I like it because of the achivements in games. If Apple really removes it, they will be taking a lot of incentive to buy app store games for a lot of people. And also incentive to buy devices on which to play such games. (iPads and iPod touches mostly). It also seems strange to me they are doing this after making such a big deal about achievements with the Apple watch. (Makes more sense in games but w/e) Are those gone too?

Theres a reason Sony made it mandatory to include trophies in ALL the games released for playstation a little while into the Playstation 3's lifecycle.

There are so many great, non-trash games in the app store that use achivements. This would be a shame.

 

[CaTOAGU]

As far as I can tell the backend of game centre is still there, so developers can still make use of Apples cloud infrastructure it's just the App that has gone. Therefor developers will need to implement the graphical front end themselves.

 

[ghostface147]

Get rid of it.

 

[dannys1]

FINALLY! I hate game center!

I can't imagine being so passionate about something so trivial.

 

[Bathplug]

I hope this doesn't mean the rise of openfeints or be required to create accounts for social sites like facebook and google to save game progress.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Yeah, it had a lot of potential. Basically, use Apple's servers and built-in tools to enable multiplayer functionality. Far easier than having to maintain your own servers and set up multiplayer to run through that. Really useful for smaller developers.

Yeah, but why make your game iOS only like that?

Build your game in Unity and use their multiplayer features and you immediately have a cross platform game where people on iOS can seamlessly play with people on literally any other device with a network connection and GPU.

 

[vmachiel]

I use it fairly often, to play online games of SSG2 and Doodlejump against my friends. I'm sure other apps use it too, so it would be sad to see it go.

I can still exist inside app. It's just not a separate app anymore.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Yeah, but why make your game iOS only like that?

Build your game in Unity and use their multiplayer features and you immediately have a cross platform game where people on iOS can seamlessly play with people on literally any other device with a network connection and GPU.

Hi Art, I'm not really a developer so you'll forgive my ignorance. I imagine iOS-only is fairly useful if you're looking for revenue, as most people on Android end up pirating the stuff anyway.

Not sure how much more difficult it would be to compile for multiple platforms, or if Unity would sort that out for you once you've made the game. But if it's the same amount of effort, and a similar programming language which offers the same features as XCode/Swift, I suppose I can't argue with what you've said.

 

[fredfnord]

I can't imagine being so passionate about something so trivial.

You haven't been on the Internet for very long, have you?

 

[jayducharme]

Part of me wished it remained and Apple invested more in gaming

I agree. Over the past several years, Apple's software has reminded me of government construction projects: a spotlight is put on a new project; its great features are touted. Then after its debut, the project is essentially ignored and languishes. Game Center was an interesting concept, an attempt to centralize competitive gaming across all of Apple's devices. But once Apple released it, Game Center seemed like it was forgotten. There were no new features brought to the app and no additional push to get customers to use it.

 

[XMZ-250]

I use game center since it's release upto iOS 6. I remember reaching the maximum friends of 500 and collecting achievements every game. But now I deleted alot of games and ignore game center starting at iOS 7. So removal of game center app is fine because I'm starting to get annoyed with game center requests and challenges.

 

[Janichsan]

I can still exist inside app. It's just not a separate app anymore.

This. GameCenter itself and it's functionality haven't been removed. In fact, they even seem to have updated the corresponding API. The only thing that has been removed is the GameCenter app, which displays achievements, leaderboards, etc.

 

[12vElectronics]

I used it ALOT in the beginning. Haven't used it at all in the past couple of years.

I'm conflicted.