Animoca might not be the household name that Zynga is when it comes to free-to-play games, but if you own an iPhone, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve played (and loved) some of their work. Pretty Pet Salon, Hospital Story, Car City – the list goes on and on. Anything you’ve ever seen published under the Dream Cortex brand? That’s their work. In fact, they’re one of the most prevalent freemium developers working in mobile today – which is why it was so puzzling to see all of their games disappear from the App Store seemingly overnight.
Animoca might not be the household name that Zynga is when it comes to free-to-play games, but if you own an iPhone, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve played (and loved) some of their work. Pretty Pet Salon, Hospital Story, Car City – the list goes on and on. Anything you’ve ever seen published under the Dream Cortex brand? That’s their work. In fact, they’re one of the most prevalent freemium developers working in mobile today – which is why it was so puzzling to see all of their games disappear from the App Store seemingly overnight.
Over the weekend, the entire Animoca catalog was removed from the iOS App Store without any reason publicly given. We’ve contacted Ibrahim El-Mouelhy, a representative for Animoca, and it seems as though they’re just as puzzled as we are;
“We’re not sure what is happening at Apple and we are trying to talk to seniorpersonnelto get to the bottom of this situation,” says El-Mouelhy. “Since Monday is a holiday in the US, we don’t expect a meaningful reply for at least a few days.”
While El-Mouelhy wasn’t able to comment further on the situation itself, he did inform us that Animoca are “working to resolve the problem, and are confident that all of our apps will be available on the App Store once again.”
Was this an accident on Apple’s part? A violation on Animoca’s? It should be interesting to see how this plays out. In the meantime, consider this a friendly reminder that more than a dozen Animoca titles are available on the Android Market.
