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Delisted apps have started reappearing in your iOS purchase history

So what the heck was with that story, PG?

Delisted apps have started reappearing in your iOS purchase history
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iOS
Story

It seems like the Appocalypse saga is coming to a welcome end, as delisted apps like BioShock, The Walking Dead, and Monkey Island have now reappeared in customers' purchase history on the App Store.

In the last few weeks, gamers had noticed that apps that have been removed from the App Store (like Rolando and Ghost Trick) had also been disappearing from their purchase history, making it impossible to re-download old apps.

Yesterday, we published a quote from a member of Apple's European PR team, who said "if [developers] remove their apps from the store, they cannot be redownloaded until the app has been resubmitted to the App Store".

Touch Arcade appear to have also received that information (this tweet seems to have been removed. Here's a screen cap):

Twitter

But Apple's US PR team later followed up and told TA that its policy was, in fact, unchanged.

It says it will continue to host backups of apps that have been removed from the store - unless the developer explicitly chooses to remove it from purchase histories too.

Mere hours after all that, the delisted apps started reappearing. If you check your purchase history today you'll find games and apps that have been delisted.

So, what the heck happened? Well, it could be the classic case of two different branches in a giant company being told different things, or a bug that Apple found and fixed after seeing the reports on Pocket Gamer and TA (and the ensuing criticism in the comments).

Whatever the case, it seems like this weird and unfortunate saga has come to a peaceful end.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer