Groundbreaking Infinity Blade Removed From App Store, Hard To Support

With the high turnover rate of mobile games, very you are able to achieve prestige worthy of the annals of mobile gaming history. Some achieve that through notoriety, others through sheer magnitude. The Infinity Blade trilogy, which remained exclusive to iOS to the very end, reached the hall of fame through pioneering innovation. Now, however, it will remain just that, a part of history no longer accessible today and for future generations as Epic Games has just pulled out all Infinity Blades from the App Store forever.

Mobile games were never really taken seriously at first. They have earned the image of being mindless pastimes like Snake on the old Nokia phones or money-grabbing addictions like Candy Crush. Due to limitations of platforms as well as limitations of phone hardware, mobile games were relegated to being to the same level as calculator and timer apps. Good to be there but only occasionally useful.

Then 2010 ended with the launch of Infinity Blade on the iPhone. The graphics might look dated by today's standards, but considering we're talking about the iPhone 4 here, the market reception wasn't surprising. I made millions in outright game purchases one year when most mobile games could only achieve those numbers through IAPs. Infinity Blade and its two installments changed the game, pun intended.

Sadly, that's not enough to keep it up forever. Epic Games announced that effective immediately the games will no longer be available for purchase from the App Store. The game developer says it has proven difficult to continue supporting the game at their level of quality, especially when they're busy working on newer games. And on Fortnite, which may or may not have caused other Epic Games projects to be shelved in its favor.

From a business perspective, it was really inevitable. Infinity Blade has never grown past the third and final game in 2013. It's not making more money and not seeing more sales. We could only wish Epic Games gave everyone a heads up before it yanked out the games because, unless you've already bought it before, there's no way to buy it now. You can still reinstall any of the games ad infinitum, or at least until they stop working on future iOS versions, but future generations of gamers will just have to rely on screenshots and playthrough videos to experience that groundbreaking piece of mobile gaming history.