Apple removes App Store's first-ever Game Boy emulator shortly after its debut

Apple's updated App Review guidelines finally allow developers to list retro game emulators. A week after Apple announced this change, the App Store got its very first Game Boy emulator, and it became one of the top free apps right after its worldwide debut. But it didn't stay under the spotlight for long.

The first-ever Game Boy emulator for the App Store was removed shortly after it got listed. While Apple didn't give any specific details, it did say that the game emulator was delisted for not adhering to App Review Guidelines related to copyright (section 5.2) and spam (section 4.3). But if you downloaded iGBA before it was removed, you can continue using it.

As it turns out, the Game Boy emulator called iGBA was a knock-off of the open-source GBA4iOS app developed by Riley Testut. As the developer said in a Threads post, Testut didn't give anyone permission to get it on the Apple App Store. He also pointed out that iGBA is "filled with ads + tracking."

For those who didn't get to try out iGBA when it was available on the App Store, it allowed loading any Game Boy ROM. That means you could simply pirate ROMs and run them on the game emulator, which, according to Nintendo, is illegal. If you were to play Game Boy games on a modern machine, one of the most convenient and legal ways would be to run them on Nintendo the Switch (get it from Amazon).

That said, the removal of the emulator leaves the question of whether Apple will allow ROM-loading apps such as iGBA to be listed. Section 5.2 in the updated App Review Guidelines doesn't clearly explain what's not permitted either. However, this delisting could make Apple offer better clarification regarding the matter.

As for the app, Testut did mention that GBA4iOS was the predecessor to Delta, the developer's newer Nintendo game emulator. He currently plans to distribute the app through his alternative app marketplace called AltStore, which is available for iPhone users in the EU.