[truegoric]

I’d say it’s curious it happened at all. As others have mentioned Apple doesn’t allow emulators at all in their store, perhaps they are afraid of losing too much of the market after EU forces them to allow side-loading?

EDIT: I just checked the App Store listing for this app - I find it pretty hilarious (and for more than one reason) that it’s listed in the Adventure category which has a pirate flag for an icon.

[simonw]

I wonder if this is a case of an individual AppStore reviewer not actually understanding what the thing they are reviewing does.

[DaiPlusPlus]

I understand that new app launches need approval by someone who actually knows the rules, whereas new updates for already-published apps are run-by the rank-and-file reviewers.

[saagarjha]

This isn't necessarily true.

[madmoose]

ScummVM isn't an emulator, it's a collection of game engines based on reverse engineering and, on occasion, original source code donations.

[truegoric]

I stand corrected, although from a policy-making perspective ScummVM allows users to run software acquired through ways not sanctioned by Apple (or owners of the original IPs), which I believe is the major part of why emulators are not allowed on App Store and thus bears a similarity to them in that particular aspect.

[myko]

It's trivial to purchase the games legally on GOG & Steam so this does not seem particularly relevant

[karolist]

Is there any philosophical difference in playing your game using ScummVM versus playing a JavaScript game on some website using Safari for iOS?

[geraldwhen]

Since there are literal emulators written in JavaScript, the answer must be no.

[wk_end]

Apple controls the JS sandbox in Safari, whereas they don’t control the ScummVM scripting sandbox. In theory it’d allow the execution of arbitrary scripts that can do anything native code can do, although I don’t know - maybe ScummVM checksums the games you load into it and will only run code it recognizes (and if so, maybe that’s why it’s allowed).

[jsjohnst]

> Apple controls the JS sandbox in Safari, whereas they don’t control the ScummVM scripting sandbox.

AppStore apps themselves are sandboxed too. You can’t execute all arbitrary code just because it’s an app.