Answers to Apple Arcade Questions

22 JULY 2022 - The game playing world finally has answers about the titles leaving Apple Arcade. Not which ones. We know that. Earlier this week, Apple launched a “Leaving Arcade Soon” section in its subscription game service. While it answered the question around which games were leaving (15 for now), it left open a few pretty big questions, like:

• When are they leaving?

• Will downloaded games still be playable?

• Assuming developers make the game available outside Apple Arcade, can game progress be carried over to the same game purchased in the App Store?

iDownloadBlog brings us some answers. Going through those:

Will downloaded games still be playable?

Yes, then no. According to the piece:

Apple’s support document clarifies that customers will have up to two weeks to play a game that is no longer available on the service. After two weeks have expired, the Apple Arcade version will no longer be playable.

Could be worse.

Assuming developers make the game available outside Apple Arcade, can game progress be carried over to the same game purchased in the App Store?

Short answer: It depends. Slightly longer answer: It depends on the developer. While the piece says a player’s “saved game progress will remain stored locally on [their] device or in iCloud,” transferring that progress to the new binary would take a bit of work on the part of the developer. iDownloadBlog says “the new app would need some extra code to transfer your saved progress from the removed Apple Arcade version.”

As for the “when” they’re leaving question, the piece does not have a hard answer for that. At least users will have a couple of extra weeks to soften the blow.