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Recently, Big Fish Games announced a new subscription based gaming service available through Apple’s App Store, giving its customers cloud access to dozens of Big Fish iPad and iPhone games for a $6.99 monthly fee.
Unfortunately, it seems that subscription-based gaming wasn’t meant to be, because  Apple pulled the app from its App Store just days after its November 18th release. At this time, no reason has been given, and Big Fish execs are surprised because the company had been ironing out the details with Apple for weeks.
“We were notified that the app was removed,” said Paul Thelen, founder of Big Fish Games. “We’re trying to follow up with Apple to try to figure out what happened.” Apparently, Big Fish had spent weeks working on the app with Apple, to meet the requirements for a subscription-based app. It was officially approved, and Apple had seen the press release before it went out.
Most subscription services are used by magazine and newspaper publishers, so the gaming company had to prove to Apple that there was a reason to charge customers a monthly fee for games.
The subscription service worked in a similar way to movie and television streaming app Netflix. Big Fish Games were not downloaded individually, but instead, were streamed over Wi-Fi from Big Fish data centers.
With any luck, this is just a small hiccup and with a few API changes, the Big Fish subscription app will be restored to the App Store. I’m a longtime fan of some of Big Fish Games’ casual titles, and like many others, I’d love the chance to pay a monthly fee for unlimited gaming access to several games. It’s a great idea, so here’s hoping that Apple doesn’t give it the axe.
[via Bloomberg]