I haven’t coded anything since my TI-85 graphing calculator decades ago, but I find it absolutely mind boggling that developers can’t seem to do this right. And it isn’t just Portal. I know Apple has a habit of changing things up a bit, but that still doesn’t excuse the fact that Pladek showed the world how to do asynchronous multiplayer perfectly nearly a decade ago and I don’t think I can name two developers other than them that can figure it out now. It is complete regression. Even the reliable developers du jour like Acram (multiple notifications, notifications on others’s turns, no notification sounds) or Dire Wolf (no notification sounds) still can’t give us the complete package. And this is Portal that we are talking about here, not some 1-man operation trying this out for the first time.
It’s sad that when I’m anticipating a new Switch game my sole thought is “I hope the game is good” but when I hear about an upcoming iOS game I think “I hope the game works.”
And yes, I do think Apple is partially to blame. I read a report (sorry, I don’t have the source off the top of my head) that Apple made more game revenue that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft combined last year. Yet Apple doesn’t take their own App Store seriously and we have to slog through the biggest digital cesspool in all of media to filter out the janky garbage or f2p nonsense to even find a good game.
But issues with Apple don’t let developers off the hook, in my opinion, especially considering that we have a small few who continue to get it right.