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That 'Bioshock' update for iOS is never happening, game removed from App Store

Imad Khan
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Bioshock iOS Gameplay Launch Trailer
For gamers wanting to return to the underwater city of Rapture on their five-inch iPhone screens, there’s some bad news: Bioshock will not be getting the update necessary to run on new Apple software, meaning the game is officially dead.

The news comes from former Touch Arcade forum mod, Killercow, who noticed that 2K Games had updated its iOS Bioshock support page stating that the game will no longer be supported.

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Not a real surprise but 2K stealthily edited its message on Bioshock's iOS9 compatibility, it's never coming back:https://t.co/iNGbOinYpe pic.twitter.com/zj2lDujWMf

— Killercow (@killercow) January 23, 2017

Bioshock was released on iOS in 2014 to a mixed reception regarding how it played on mobile. It currently sits at a 68 on Metacritic. Fans weren’t impressed by the much lower graphical fidelity on iPhone and complained that the game really wasn’t fit for mobile devices. It turned out that 2K Games lost interest in supporting the game months after release. The game was removed with the release of iOS version 8.4 due to incompatibility issues. 2K had stated that the game would eventually be updated. Somewhere between September 2015 and now, though, 2K made the decision to drop the project altogether.

It’s really unfortunate for those that dropped the $15 to play Bioshock on the go. While the game still does run, 2K cannot guarantee how well it will perform on later versions of iOS. For all intents and purposes, if gamers want to go through Rapture one more time, it’s best they look toward console or PC versions.

Bioshock was released in 2007 to near universal praise. Its mature themes and unique environment enveloped players in the underwater city of Rapture. It also forced gamers to make ethical or utilitarian decisions, bringing a layer of moral ambiguity that made it a major talking point for that year. Unfortunately, the team behind Bioshock, Irrational Games, downsized to just 15 employees after the release of Bioshock: Infinite, with most of the staff going their separate ways. Here’s hoping series creator Ken Levine can excite gamers once again, even with a significantly smaller team.

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