iGame Radio

Update: Unity’s CEO made an official comment on the Unity blog this afternoon regarding the situation and what Unity is doing about it.

Yesterday’s iPhone OS 4.0 announcement created great excitement about the possibilities for developers and users of the new iPhone OS. Who couldn’t be happy about accessing folders, multitasking applications, and a Game Center. The excitement was visceral…until the SDK posted and developers began looking at the new developer agreement. Like pouring ice water on a fire, the rage was quelled, and murmurings of worry began.

Specifically, this post by John Gruber, in which he pointed to a particular clause in the agreement, 3.3.1, which states:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

That last phrase, “Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited” is what you will see everyone quoting on forums and blogs around the Internet the past 24 hours. It calls into question many popular middleware tools, such as Torque 2D for the iPhone, Unity 3D, and GameSalad, and whether games developed using them would no longer be allowed on the App Store.

It’s popularly believed and echoed in many forums that this is a move specifically made by Apple to outlaw Flash on the iPhone. In truth, there is a Flash-to-iPhone tool that Adobe is debuting next Monday in Adobe Professional CS5. But Steve Jobs has long held that Flash degrades performance on the iPhone, and stated categorically yesterday in response to a question that there would be no Flash for the iPhone OS 4.0.

Developers have been flooding into forums wondering if they will have to stop using their favorite tools. More worrisome, some have implied or stated outright that they might be willing to ditch the iPhone and move onto Android development (curiously, we’ve not seen anyone mention Windows 7 development yet).

Unity Technologies’ Tom Higgins has adopted a wait and see attitude. “We don’t have enough information just yet to warrant any…response to the matter,” he said. “The main problem here is that while we can interpret the new agreement terms we really need to have a sit-down conversation with Apple to hash out details and get confirmation about their intent…”

He reminded everyone that “…in prior releases new terms were introduced then changed before the final release so nothing is set in stone just yet.”

Unity CEO David Helgason is also waiting for more from Apple. “We’ve had no indication from Apple things are going to change for Unity,” he said. “We have a great relationship with Apple and will do everything we can to comply with its terms of service so we can provide uninterrupted service to our more than 120,000 users.

Apple has not made an official statement yet regarding the interpretation of the clause, nor how it affects these middleware products. Speculation of what may happen runs the gamut from Apple targeting only Flash middleware to belief that Apple will pick and choose who to target. Universal hope is held that Apple will clarify the clause soon.