Expiration Dates Have No Place in Gaming

Rush Hour | Mobile Gaming Sucks

Cell phone games are mostly terrible - I know, mind-blowing revelation there - but they're not all bad. Some are even pretty good, at least until they're permanently removed and you can never play them again.

From Chaos Rings to Infinity Blade, some of the best games released during the mobile game boom are now slowly fading from existence because publishers and developers don't care about preserving their work. iOS and Android are terrible platforms for gaming, and now subscription services like Apple Arcade are making it even easier to wipe games from the face of the Earth.

This is part of a larger issue regarding gachas and live-service games spreading like a virus and infecting the industry, but that's a story for another time.

Here's hoping Fantasian gets a Steam port...

0:00 Remember when cell phone gaming was good?
0:54 The early years of touch screen exclusives
1:44 Mobile platforms are horrible for game preservation
3:05 Square wants you to forget about Chaos Rings
4:04 Mobile games have expiration dates
5:30 Why gachas took over
6:00 Why the Vita failed
6:59 Nintendo's fall from grace
8:09 Lessons haven't been learned