The idea of the Apple Arcade was pretty straightforward from the start. Apple wanted to offer more subscription services and did this by providing access to a variety of games across all its platforms for a fixed price, and they also promised that games on the Apple Arcade would never offer additional monetisation in the form of loot boxes, microtransactions or battle passes.
A number of great games have been released via the Arcade, but developers are now unsure whether Apple will support the service in the future. In an interview with Mobilegamer.biz, several anonymous developers have expressed doubts about Arcade.
Not only has Apple cancelled several projects, it has also cut back on the seemingly initially generous payments to developers who joined the service:
"We're going to see that amount and decrease and decrease and decrease until it's pennies. At that point putting a game on Arcade starts to become much less viable."
Another source has claimed that Apple has "cancelled a shitload of projects and pissed off a lot of people", and that this happened as long ago as in spring 2021. In addition, many say that Apple no longer orders any original games from developers, but buys them, and only those based on already popular brands.