Final Fantasy iOS Game Shuts Down Due to Curious In-App Purchase Bug

[555gallardo]

Square Enix is known in the gaming community for being one of the weirdest companies out there. They were first to sell Final Fantasy titles on iPhone for up to 14,99€ back in the days of iPhone 5 already. They discontinued development of Hitman, Deus Ex and Tomb Raider citing low sales and eventually sold IPs and studios for mere $300 million, even though their beloved JRPG titles sold lot less. The company also tended to sell games exclusively either on PlayStation or Nintendo Switch, and went on to obsessively focus on NFT. Most of what I told, happenec at around the same time.

 

[WilliApple]

Update 8:28 pm: As noted by forum member An_mo_, Apple made a change to the security requirements for App Store receipts that went into effect the day before Square Enix reported receiving complaints, so it appears that may be related to the issue users were experiencing. If so, it still remains unclear why Square Enix was unable to update the app to support the new certificates.

They gave clarification, including emails and a entire banner on ASC about this...
Why were they unable to push a fix...

 

[Spunk Bubble]

Poor excuse.

 

[spazzcat]

And this bug cannot be fixed? 😅

They most likely were using some private API?

 

[MasterControlProgram]

Unfortunately the games companies that primarily focus on console games seem to be uniquely unable to adapt to mobile development. They still have that console game mentality and basically ship a game and move on to the next thing. They aren't interested in any longterm support or keeping the game working well on new versions of hardware or iOS.

 

[honam1021]

And this bug cannot be fixed? 😅

Apple's policy of requiring app updates to target recent versions of iOS SDK makes it prohibitively expensive to patch games that don't generate a constant stream of revenue (aka pay-to-win).

As of right now Apple requires app updates submitted to be compiled with the iOS 17 SDK or later (to be raised to iOS 18 when 18.4 reaches RC). Supporting the new SDK requires an version upgrade to the game engine (Unity, Unreal etc.). Upgrading the engine breaks the game's code requiring even more manhours to fix. Publisher decided all that work isn't worth it for a game they no longer make money on and pulls it from sale.

App Store Connect upload requirement starts April 29 - Latest News - Apple Developer

Apps uploaded to App Store Connect must be built with Xcode 15 for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, or watchOS 10, starting April 29, 2024.Learn about submitting your apps

developer.apple.com

 

[Razorpit]

Honeslty I regreted my purchase when I bought it on the gamecube and the remaster wasn't much better

I bought it and played it once or twice. Maybe...

 

[ILoveCalvinCool]

Everyone in here who doesn’t know much about JRPGs needs to understand that Square Enix is essentially the Apple of gaming. They do things their own weird way, on their own inexplicable schedule, for mysterious reasons they will never explain. See also: Nintendo

The explanation for why SE shut down the game might have as much to do with an ancient materia-generating comet in the center of our planet as it does with the actual bug. We’ll never know.

 

[nt5672]

I'm guessing that they were doing something that Apple did not approve and the change, while probably not purposely targeted at this game, nevertheless shutdown what they were doing. They knew they would not get approval to continue and that the revenue from whatever they were doing would go away. So no need to continue.

 

[bsolar]

They most likely were using some private API?

They probably were not and probably that's what bit them in the back.

What they probably were doing is using Apple's IAP purchase receipts to track which IAP were made by a user, which was the "Apple way" to do it. Apple changed IAP receipts from being SHA-1 to be SHA-256 and recently dropped support for SHA-1, which means an old app is unable to read the new receipts.

Basically, they need to update the app if they want to keep track of what was purchased by a user and that likely comes with additional update effort due to new app submissions having to comply to a new minimum SDK version.

Had SE used their own servers to track purchases instead, they would have been unaffected.

 

[spazzcat]

They probably were not and probably that's what bit them in the back.

What they probably were doing is using Apple's IAP purchase receipts to track which IAP were made by a user, which was the "Apple way" to do it. Apple changed IAP receipts from being SHA-1 to be SHA-256 and recently dropped support for SHA-1, which means an old app is unable to read the new receipts.

Basically, they need to update the app if they want to keep track of what was purchased by a user and that likely comes with additional update effort due to new app submissions having to comply to a new minimum SDK version.

Had SE used their own servers to track purchases instead, they would have been unaffected.

So they weren't keeping their code current, that isn't an Apple problem and everyone has dropped SHA-1.

 

[bsolar]

So they weren't keeping their code current, that isn't an Apple problem and everyone has dropped SHA-1.

Sure, but it doesn't always make financial sense to keep up to date so I don't entirely blame SE either.

 

[bhirt37]

They probably were not and probably that's what bit them in the back.

What they probably were doing is using Apple's IAP purchase receipts to track which IAP were made by a user, which was the "Apple way" to do it. Apple changed IAP receipts from being SHA-1 to be SHA-256 and recently dropped support for SHA-1, which means an old app is unable to read the new receipts.

Basically, they need to update the app if they want to keep track of what was purchased by a user and that likely comes with additional update effort due to new app submissions having to comply to a new minimum SDK version.

Had SE used their own servers to track purchases instead, they would have been unaffected.

I disagree. Apple's support document says that using the standard apple API will work with the newer SHA-256 signing (since iOS 16 SDK), so they likely wouldn't have to do anything to that IAP code. The bigger issue is that in order to release a new version of their app they would have to upgrade to newer SDKs. Apple currently requires the iOS 17 SDK to publish apps. Migrating to a new SDK often requires code changes, so that could be a major deterrent. Especially if you haven't released an update in a while and are going from something like the iOS 13 SKD to the iOS 17 SDK. Since the most recent version of the game was v1.2 from December of 2020, iOS 13 SDK would have been the SDK they used.

I think the most likely issue (mentioned above) is in order to do any of this, they almost certainly would have to upgrade their game engine to a newer version as well. The original version of FF Crystal Chronicles was written with Pollux. I don't know for sure what the iOS version used, but I am pretty confidant they used Unity. The Switch and PS4 remastered versions (released on the same day as mobile) used Unity, and porting to two different engines would have made no sense. There were lots of issues with existing Unity projects no longer working with Xcode 15/iOS 17 SDK. The first version of Unity to support iOS 17 SDK was "Unity 2022.3.10". That is many versions newer than what Square Enix used. If I had to guess, they were using "Unity 2019.2" which was the first version to support the iOS 13 SDK. I would be interested to know exactly the technical reasons, just out of curiosity. But as others have pointed out, it's probably the game isn't making money and they don't want to put another penny into the product and this was a good excuse.

TN3138: Handling App Store receipt signing certificate changes | Apple Developer Documentation

Ensure that your app’s local receipt validation is compatible with intermediate certificates that require using the SHA-256 algorithm.

developer.apple.com

App Store Connect upload requirement starts April 29 - Latest News - Apple Developer

Apps uploaded to App Store Connect must be built with Xcode 15 for iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, or watchOS 10, starting April 29, 2024.Learn about submitting your apps

developer.apple.com

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Submit Your iPhone Apps to the App Store - Latest News - Apple Developer

iOS 13 is now running on 77% of all iOS devices introduced in the last four years, worldwide. Deliver great user experiences by seamlessly integrating with Dark Mode, Sign in with Apple, and the latest advances in ARKit 3, Core ML 3, and Siri. Starting April 30, 2020, all iPhone apps submitted...

developer.apple.com

 

[bsolar]

I disagree. Apple's support document says that using the standard apple API will work with the newer SHA-256 signing (since iOS 16 SDK), so they likely wouldn't have to do anything to that IAP code. The bigger issue is that in order to release a new version of their app they would have to upgrade to newer SDKs.

I'm not sure we actually disagree. Apple made a breaking change in the way IAP works: even if the API provides the same interface on different SDK versions, if the API has a different behavior between versions that is is still a breaking change to the user. Without that change SE likely wouldn't need to update the App, so the IAP breaking change is the trigger.

I do agree the bigger deal is not the IAP change in itself but everything else that would have to be updated to publish the App with the current compatibility rules. SE likely would have to invest far more effort that they deem worth.

Said that, if the App is not maintained and has not been maintained for years it was only a matter of time until some breaking change would have killed it.