About 15 years ago, mobile games were usually low-effort slop that filled the Play Store and Apple App Store. There were only a few actual full-fledged games worth their price tag. Infinity Blade was indeed that game. I was that guy who would not shut up about it. It was truly ahead of its time. It was Fruit Ninja with a deep combat system and a pretty long campaign for a mobile game. You fought the God King, you died, your son picked up your sword, and you tried again. It was Dark Souls before I knew what Dark Souls was, except I played it on a device that also held my calendar. It won countless awards and was super successful.
But that was not enough. The game, alongside its two sequel versions, was taken down from the App Store on December 10, 2018, because of the problem of updating the game for newer devices. The same Epic that would later wage millions of dollars in court against Apple for App Store fees could not afford one engineer to support Infinity Blade. So it vanished. If you had not already downloaded it, you were out of luck. Like many other digital-only games, the story usually ends with people reminiscing on the good times that game provided.
But the story did not end there. Someone decided that was not good enough.
First came the PC port. I do not know who they are, and honestly that makes it cooler. It showed up with enhanced graphics, proper mouse and keyboard controls, a launcher, and dynamic shadows. They fixed broken materials. They separated diffuse and specular textures. They untied camera sensitivity from framerate. This was not some emulator wrapper you download and pray over. Because now it is on Android.
Let me say that again. Infinity Blade. The iOS exclusive. The game Apple put on stage during keynote presentations to prove the iPhone was a real gaming device. Now runs on Android.
We are in the midst of a battle against an all-digital future where corporations control everything. We will own nothing and pay so much more for it. Sony and Take-Two Interactive are joining forces to usher in this nightmare future. With GTA 6 being digital-only and Sony discontinuing physical media, they want to make sure they can set prices to whatever they want and control the distribution of said content. We have already seen what happens when companies hold all the keys. Infinity Blade vanished. When everything is digital, the delete button is the only thing standing between a game and oblivion.
That is why these instances like Infinity Blade are direct rebellion against corporations and their incessant greed. It is pretty disgusting how corrupt and dark the gaming industry has become in the pursuit of infinite growth. The people doing these ports are not pirates. They are archivists with compilers. The industry wants you to think preservation is piracy
The future is not the hardware or the storefront. The future is the people who refuse to let good games die. I hope we get more copycat PC and Android ports. The God King keeps coming back. So does this game. And honestly, that is the happiest ending I could have asked for.
You can join the Infinite Blade discord here.
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