Over the weekend, the first emulator of a portable console game hit the App Store, following a relaxation of App Store review guidelines earlier this week.
Fast forward 24 hours and the app is gone, removed from the App Store. However, we are not sure why. Perhaps ROM boot emulators are actually banned and this one slipped through. Or perhaps iGBA was simply a clone of the GBA4iOS open source project and was shipped to the store without permission or proper licensing.
MacRumors’ Joe Rossignol says Apple told him the app was removed due to spam and copyright infringement.
Unfortunately, this is not entirely clear and still leaves open the question of whether ROM emulators are acceptable in eyes. checking the application or not.
Copyright infringement may have been confirmed as GBA4iOS creator Riley Testut complained that iGBA stole his code and assets. (The only significant change between iGBA and GBA4iOS was the addition of advertising.) But this question could also arise from the possible piracy implications associated with ROM emulators as a category.
At this point, we just simply don't know. Apple's changes to the App Store rules refer to emulators in terms of the range of games in a single app; it does not explicitly indicate whether the application is allowed to enable ROM import and download functionality.
The iGBA release provided strong evidence that it was indeed resolved, but now it has been rejected for unclear reasons and we are back to square one. It would be nice if app review guidelines made clear Apple's stance on emulators one way or the other.
