EA ruins everything. They ruined SimCity when they bought it from MAXIS too.
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EA Retiring Tetris Apps for iOS in April 2020
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This is the problem with games that need to ping home in order to work.
Haven't played the iOS version in years (certainly not re-installing it now), but presumably it sent data back to EA at certain points. If so, when EA takes down the server the game pings, it kills the game for everyone who downloaded it. :-/
Haven't played the iOS version in years (certainly not re-installing it now), but presumably it sent data back to EA at certain points. If so, when EA takes down the server the game pings, it kills the game for everyone who downloaded it. :-/
I get physical media when it comes to movies but why music? Music has been DRM free in online stores for years now. Unless you are an audiophile and don’t want compression. That I get.
I have my own library of music that I own in a digital DRM free format and I augment it with an Apple Music subscription but if I like a song or album enough I’ll always buy a copy outright from the iTunes Store so I have it if/when the time comes that I don’t want to continue to pay for a streaming service.
I don’t know about the premium version, but the basic Tetris iOS app doesn’t require an internet connection to play. I’ve played it dozens of times during flights.
I heard it is because they lost their license from Tetris Company and N3twork is now the developer. And from what I hear, N3twork's working on some pretty cool stuff that all Tetris players are going to love...
Here's to a bigger better Tetris world!
Here's to a bigger better Tetris world!
Just go grab a copy of Petris or Schmetris or any one of the 3,200 Tetris-ish (Tetrish?) games available in the app store and get your block rotation game on.
Yeah, good point... I do rip everything lossless and value the physical artwork but that’s not what I was thinking— online music has become a battle of streaming services and I’d kind of forgotten you could still buy the music outright...
Such crap. I have never needed "support" for the game, and can't remember the last update to the app. I definitely don't need internet access to play it the way I play it. (I'm guessing if you had it on an iPod touch never connected to a network, you could still play it in perpetuity?)
Anyway, I fell in love playing the arcade version 30 years ago, and have never cared about add-ons, embellishments, backgrounds, or any of the other "improvements" that can be made. This simple "put blocks where they go" game is electronic, but such a great brain teaser. Losing it is a "first world problem" to be sure, but that doesn't stop me from wanting EA to eat a bag of ****. Goodbye old friend - until I have to buy you again...
Anyway, I fell in love playing the arcade version 30 years ago, and have never cared about add-ons, embellishments, backgrounds, or any of the other "improvements" that can be made. This simple "put blocks where they go" game is electronic, but such a great brain teaser. Losing it is a "first world problem" to be sure, but that doesn't stop me from wanting EA to eat a bag of ****. Goodbye old friend - until I have to buy you again...
I suppose the license issuse was coming up next, and they had to fit that in to the existing userbase, and try to make sure they could make those things fit with the development team, and even rotating some staff or turning round some new updates was getting tricky, and all these things were coming down faster and faster and it all mounted up until it was game over. 
Reminds me of when they pulled Rock Band and Rock Band Reloaded off the App Store, both games I had paid for and even bought in-app extra songs to play. I don't remember it needing an online connection to play (I had it on an iPod Touch and played it pretty much everywhere) but after they removed it it wasn't even in my purchase history. I'm guessing somewhere in Apple's terms of service they say that there is no guarantee that a purchase will be available forever, but I didn't read it so I still feel scammed.
I still have Tris, the original iOS game from the original iPhone, from before EA showed up and whizzed all over everybody’s parade. I’m sure it doesn’t work anymore, probably 32bit, and we probably have no way to even install it even if it did, but I just like knowing I still have it. The one and only game I ever ran on iOS.
Never expect any software to last more than a few years. I've learned the hard way over the past 30 years.
That's the thing though, I never would have thought that Tetris (for crying out loud) would fall into this category. I'm surprised this kind of move is not against Apple's TOS for app developers... I mean, can they really simply disable an app that you purchased, especially one that has no legitimate need to access a server?
It happens all the time. I have plenty of apps that I purchased over the years but cannot use again due to support dropped and they are no longer compatible. You just take your things and move on
Agreed, but there are consequences to this fact.
I found that iOS apps do not tend to last long compared to what I am used to coming from desktop platforms (either due to support being stopped or to a switch to a subscription model or to this "kill switch"). As a consequence, I am much less likely to pay for them. I still do buy apps from time to time, but much less often than I would if I trusted longer software life more.
No longer compatible, I can understand. System updates can break apps, and I don’t expect developers to continue to implement fixes indefinitely for old apps that are no longer actively sold. But this is different, this is EA saying they are going to flip a switch on a certain date that purposefully deactivates an otherwise perfectly usable app.
Boo to EA! I bought Tetris Premium and a few in-app purchases (against my better judgement) only now to see them pull this. They could have at least let people keep them on their devices to play like Epic did with the Infinity blade series, even if they removed it from the app store. I suspect that Tetris wanted EA to do this also so we would have to buy Tetris Royale or whatever it's called.
Exactly this. So much outrage over nothing.
You can even play Tetris in a web browser for free, if you know where to look.
While that is true with a lot of Nintendo Switch carts, it's not with all. Some Switch games only contain part of the game and will download the rest online. Also, a cart you bought last year, might not work on a Switch firmware 5 years from now. So if Nintendo ever shuts their online service down and you pop the cart in it will not work since it will require an update to run on the Switch's latest firmware.