A few days ago we talked about how Apple was going to start loosening its grip on classic game emulators on its phones and tablets. In other words, emulators were going to be allowed in the App Store, but there was still some doubt about whether all of them would be permitted. Now we know a little more about the matter.
Just two days after Apple removed the iGBA emulator from the iOS App Store, an NES emulator called Bimmy briefly appeared before being taken down.
MacRumors reported that the app was described as being for home games, but also supported ROMs provided by players. Unfortunately, when we tried to download Bimmy, we received an error message saying that it was no longer available.
The app was withdrawn for fear of reprisals
Now, when clicking on a link to Bimmy, it displays “This app is currently not available in your country or region”. This time, it was not Apple who removed it, but the developer. In the MacRumors forums, the developer stated that they removed the app “out of fear”.
“No one pressured me to do it, but I got more nervous as the day went on,” he wrote.
It’s a shame, because this app was much more promising than iGBA, which had many concerns about data collection and was plagued with ads.
The developer of Bimmy posted the link to their open-source code on the MacRumors forum and stated that Bimmy has “no ads or tracking of any kind”.
But their fear is also understandable, given Nintendo’s recent crackdown on emulators. The developers of the Yuzu application, for example, withdrew after being sued by Nintendo, and the Dolphin Emulator team gave up on bringing their emulator to Steam after Valve received a vague legal threat from the company.
Later, GitLab removed the Suyu fork of Yuzu after receiving an email from Nintendo. You can’t blame an emulator developer for backing down, Nintendo can ruin you forever.
