Recently, a number of builders complained about how Apple threatened to take away their apps from the App Store as a result of they hadn’t been up to date in a “significant amount of time.” Now, the corporate has responded — by issuing a press release successfully saying that no one was downloading the apps anyhow.

The discover, launched on Friday night, reads partially:

As a part of the App Store Improvements course of, builders of apps that haven’t been up to date inside the final three years and fail to satisfy a minimal obtain threshold — which means the app has not been downloaded in any respect or extraordinarily few occasions throughout a rolling 12 month interval — obtain an e-mail notifying them that their app has been recognized for potential elimination from the App Store.

We’ve heard about these emails earlier than — final week, builders like Robert Kabwe and Emilia Lazer-Walker reported getting them, and expressed misery that they’d 30 days to replace their apps, or they’d be faraway from the shop. Other builders shared related experiences on Twitter, saying that the coverage, and the period of time they got to make adjustments, had been unfair to indie builders.

They additionally expressed deeper issues about Apple deciding to wipe away a whole class of apps as a result of it thinks they don’t belong on its retailer. Lazer-Walker argued that video games ought to be allowed to be completed, and that they’ll nonetheless be beneficial with out being a service. Kabwe expressed an identical thought, mentioning that you may nonetheless purchase console video games from the 2000s. To put the argument one other means: Apple eradicating these apps is a bit prefer it eradicating motion pictures from the iTunes Store simply because they present up with black bars on fashionable TVs (although I do perceive that deciphering a video sign is simpler than operating code).

Apple’s clarification does clear up why it, as some builders famous, appeared to use the principles inconsistently. For instance, one developer noted that Pocket God, a preferred recreation from the iPhone’s early days, hasn’t been up to date for seven years however remains to be on the App Store. Apple is principally saying it’s nonetheless up as a result of it’s nonetheless fashionable.

From one angle, this reasoning doesn’t essentially gel with the primary half of Apple’s submit, the place it says it removes previous apps to make sure “user trust in quality apps,” and to enhance discoverability, safety and privateness, and consumer expertise. After all — if an app is problematic as a result of it’s outdated, extra downloads would make a nasty app an even bigger difficulty. Who’s being harmed if there’s an outdated app virtually nobody is downloading?

But Apple says it doesn’t need the App Store cluttered up with apps that each builders and customers have forgotten about. It has sufficient issues making it simple for customers to search out good apps as it’s, and it’s simple to think about Apple seeing deleting previous, seemingly irrelevant apps as an excellent answer.

While Apple’s submit could really feel like a slap within the face to builders fearful about dropping one thing that they spent real effort and time on, the corporate is extending a tiny olive department. Its submit notes that anybody who receives a discover from right here on out — and people who already obtained a discover — could have 90 days as a substitute of 30 to replace their app earlier than it’s eliminated. While that ought to make it simpler for builders to save lots of their apps, it doesn’t let the packages “exist as completed objects,” as Lazer-Walker put it. Apple, it appears, is simply within the accomplished objects which can be nonetheless getting eyeballs.