Apple now allows retro game emulators in the App Store

For about as long as anyone can remember, people have been trying to use the impressive power and always-in-your-pocket traits of iPhones to play games for old consoles like GameBoy. Emulating the functions of the chips in old consoles is perfectly legal, but distributing the games themselves (usually called “ROMs”) is often not as they are protected by copyright.

Apple has never allowed these apps in the App Store, though. So those making retro console emulators for iPhone have had to make their apps available via sideloading on jailbroken iPhones (a big security risk, and increasingly difficult besides) or sometimes even by hiding their emulator within an innocuous app like a calculator.

New changes to the App Store Review Guidelines may change all that. Responding to regulatory pressure, Apple is changing some of its rules around what is allowed and what isn’t. In the EU, music streaming services will be able to include a link to an external site to make purchases/subscriptions. But worldwide, one can now publish retro game emulators to the App Store.

Section 4.7 of the App Review Guidelines now reads:

4.7 Mini apps, mini games, streaming games, chatbots, plug-ins, and game emulators

Apps may offer certain software that is not embedded in the binary, specifically HTML5 mini apps and mini games, streaming games, chatbots, and plug-ins. Additionally, retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games. 

There are some caveats, of course. Any game that an emulator app makes available to download must follow “all applicable laws,” which means it can only provide access to public domain ROMs or those that have been licensed for distribution. Apple requires emulators to carry the age rating of the highest-rated content in the app, the apps have to have a method of filtering and reporting objectionable content, and they have to follow all the other rules around data privacy, exposing native APIs to the emulated software, and so on.

It is unclear if it will be possible for a retro game emulator app to allow users to load up a ROM that they have stored on their iPhone’s internal storage or in a cloud storage service. There doesn’t appear to be a legal roadblock to this sort of thing–media apps on the app store can play illegally acquired MP4s just fine, they just can’t provide any way to find or download them.

The rule change is just a few days old, so we haven’t yet seen new emulators in the store to test. Since a cottage industry of retro game emulation for jailbroken iPhones or things like AltStore, already exists, we probably won’t have to wait long.