Apple Arcade Senior Director Alex Rofman says that Apple’s subscription game service, Apple Arcade, was not set up to make the Cupertino firm any money while simultaneously insisting that Apple Arcade game developers are making an income.
Apple launched Apple Arcade in 2019 and added the gaming service to its new Apple One bundles in 2020. It’s now about to celebrate its fifth anniversary, having grown to hundreds of games for the iOS, iPadOS, Apple TV, Mac, and Vision Pro platforms.
However, Apple Arcade senior director Alex Rofman recently told The Guardian newspaper that the service is not about promoting spatial games or even about making Apple money.
\[Apple Arcade\] was about games that were designed just to be fun and engaging, not built around a business model, not built around timers or video ads. We were not looking to replicate the top genres on mobile necessarily, we weren’t looking to bring a match-three that was better than Candy Crush we focused on games that wouldn’t have had an opportunity were it not for Arcade.
Alex Rofman, Senior Director of Apple Arcade
“We fund the development of new games so that developers can build them without risk,” he continued. Speaking of Sneaky Sasquatch as one example, he said. “It’s very aligned with Apple’s values: it’s an incredibly deep, challenging game, but there’s no violence. There’s nothing offensive.”
Rofman says Apple has placed an emphasis on family games in Apple Arcade, and he says this is part of how parents can rely on the company.
“‘Free to play’ games aren’t particularly family-friendly,” says Rofman. “They don’t necessarily have offensive themes, but parents can’t hand their iPad to their kid in a free-to-play game and feel comfortable that there’s not going to be $100 in currency purchases or whatever.”
“So we do think that Arcade is an outlet for indie studios with creative, innovative ideas,” he said. “That is still important to us and always will be.”
Not everyone has a high opinion of Apple Arcade, as game developers have said that Apple doesn’t really care about games. Developers have said that while Apple Arcade payments at launch were quite generous, Apple has since been reducing payments to developers and has also canceled game projects.
According to a report last month from mobilegamer.biz, some Apple Arcade developers have even said there is a “smell of death” around the game subscription service. However, that doesn’t mean many game developers still don’t appreciate Apple Arcade.
“Despite its imperfections, we’re very very happy Arcade exists. It has made premium games viable on mobile,” one game studio executive said, explaining that their company would not exist without Apple’s support.
However, Rofman is pushing back on disparaging comments about Apple Arcade.
“[Developers] with games where the player base is growing can expect to see their bonus pool earnings grow as well,” claims Rofman, “given that they’re based on engagement.”
“But as you can imagine, despite the incredibly high quality of our catalog,” said Rofman, “not every game in a catalog of more than 200 titles is going to grow its player base month over month.”