Apple Is Killing A Popular Google Stadia Workaround For iOS

By now, Apple's reasons for not allowing game streaming services on the iOS App Store have been well documented. Though Apple has changed up its rules to potentially allow game streaming services like Google Stadia and Microsoft's Project xCloud to be available through the iOS App Store, its requirements are still so specific and tedious that neither company is likely to take advantage of those new rules. Now, it seems, Apple is killing off a popular workaround that allowed Stadia subscribers to easily play their Stadia games on iPhones and iPads.

While Google Stadia isn't officially available on iOS, subscribers can technically play Stadia games through a web browser – which is something that Apple actually encourages as an alternative to App Store distribution. One app called Stadium essentially offered Stadia subscribers a fullscreen web browser that let them play their Stadia games on iPhone and iPad with relative ease. Unfortunately, the creator of that app says that Apple will soon be taking down Stadium, encouraging users to download it while they still can.

The app's creator, Zachary Knox, first broke the news on the Discord server dedicated to Stadium before heading to the Stadia subreddit to elaborate on why Apple is removing the app. "To be clear: While I am obviously disappointed by this, I don't resent Apple for this decision," Knox said. "They didn't want their native frameworks and WebKit interacting how I had them working."

Knox goes on to say that he believes "Google definitely cares about iOS users," and says that he plans to clean up Stadium's code and release it as an open source app in the next few weeks. While this may seem like a big setback for Stadia users with an iOS device, it might not be long before we see Google roll out a web-based streaming solution of its own.

After all, that's what Amazon is doing with its Luna streaming service, and if companies like Google and Microsoft don't want to deal with Apple's complex rules for game streaming apps on the iOS App Store, that's really the only avenue they have left. We'll see what Google does from here, but if you're interested in playing Stadia games on one of Apple's mobile devices, you might want to grab the Stadium browser while you still can.