Devs back Unity after API-call fallout

Unity Technologies has put an end to a security flaw in its iPhone engine after Apple began banning App Store games built with the Unity Engine.

The firm has released version 1.5.1 of Unity iPhone – a key update for the platform – is said will remove the engine’s previous allowance of controversial in-game API technology that had the potential to hack customer’s personal data.

Last month, certain Unity-built iPhone games were refused entry to the App Store as Apple detected that these games had the potential to use the API call technology, which itself has been pinpointed in previous iPhone hacks and scams.

It was quickly established that developers rejected by Apple – and indeed Unity itself – were not privy to the potentially harmful nature of the API tech, and had simply made honest mistakes.

Unity’s chief executive David Helgason, upon reading the news on Develop, posted a response in the comments section.

“When the problem emerged we spent day and night working on a fix,” he said, “which is now being sent to iPhone developers who could be hit by this.

“The whole thing only took days and only a handful of apps will be delayed because of this – another 350 or more are still happily live in the App Store.”

Now the firm is moving on, and is clearly enjoying the growing success of the Unity Engine on Apple’s game store. Over ten per cent of AppShopper.com’s Top 25 paid for Apps were built with Unity iPhone, the company said.

“Unity-built new releases StarWars: Trench Run and Ravensword: The Fallen King both became top paid for apps on AppShopper.com within a week of release,” read a statement.

And a fleet of iPhone developers are backing the engine, which is widely praised for its royalty-free license and affordability.

“Unity iPhone has been our special super glue offering a great PhysX engine and solving the hard parts of iPhone compatibility which have allowed us to focus on the game itself rather than the engine," said Jonathan Czeck, co-founder of Graveck Interactive.

"Without a doubt, it helped us overcome the many competitors on the App Store as we rose all the way to the number one spot of best selling games,” he added.

Noah Bordner, co-founder of Mika Mobile, said the group was committed to use the Unity engine for future projects.

“It’s proven to be the ideal tool for us and many other developers”, he said, “with each new release the engine grows more feature-rich and optimized.”