Rivals for Catan another victim of the App-ocalypse

iOS Universal •

Because I’m a filthy hipster when it comes to board games, I tend to shit all over the seminal euro game, Settlers of Catan. It’s the cool thing to do these days, and I’m nothing if not cool [don’t sell yourself short, you’re also a douche -ed.]. I just find the game to be a random mess and, because the guys in my group are all better at it than me, tend to always find myself pinned into a corner from which escape is hopeless. As you can tell, my opinion of Settlers probably lies in the fact that I’m not good at it, but, whatever. This post is about Settlers’ little 2-player cousin, Rivals for Catan. Now, that’s a game that I truly enjoy both on the tabletop and my iPad, but we just found out that the latter isn’t long for this world thanks to Apple.

Yesterday, without any warning, USM pulled Rivals of Catan from the App Store. Due to issues with how the app was coded, updating it to 64-bit compatibility wasn’t possible. Instead of leaving a potentially dead app on the App Store and charging people money for something they know won’t work in the future (sound familiar?), USM decided to simply pull the app. They announced their decision via social media:

Dear Catanians,

Regrettably the current “Rivals for Catan” app will not be available on the App Store anymore from today (August 1st). It is unfortunately not possible to update the game and its 32 bit architecture for iOS 11.

We’d like to thank all players for their support: We are very sorry that the app cannot be updated and we ask for your understanding.

Anyone using the app can keep playing the game until the device is updated to iOS 11. “Rivals for Catan” will not run under iOS 11.

We are working full-speed on a completely new app which contains the card game “Rivals for Catan” (new name “Catan – The Duel”) with great new card duels for iPhone and iPad.

Your USM team

The fact that they’re working on an entirely new app to bring Rivals back to our phones and iPads almost makes up for the fact that they used the word “Catanians”. Ugh.

This also means that those of us who purchased Rivals for Catan will, most likely, have to repurchase the title when the new app comes out. You can grouse, but making games costs money and I’ll be happy to toss them a few more bucks to have a new version of this 2-player dandy on my iPad.

Hat tip: AppAddict

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