My app update submission to Apple was just rejected with the following message:
I’ve read briefly that this is fixed in 4.19. Unless it’s coming out tomorrow this fix needs to be hotfixed as soon as possible.
Additionally it would be well advised that Epic maintains a shipping example game on the Apple app store so that Epic engineers encounter messages like this before Joe Shmoe or someone like me who has no weight with Apple runs into it and has his livelihood permanently annihilated. At the very least it seems like one of you should be on the blower letting Apple’s review staff know what’s up and that it’s unintentional and not malicious. Develop a working relationship please.
For the rest of you, apparently you can use the “nm” tool to verify what third party libraries you have, but I don’t what is involved with that. But I personally won’t be submitting any more updates until 4.19 is out and the fix has been verified by someone else.
To update, they are not budging. Here is the communication so far. After their last post they removed my ability to reply.
Apple don’t give a flying **** about developers. They might listen to Epic. Unfortunately Epic don’t seem to give a flying **** about this situation either.
It’s looking more and more like Unreal Engine on iOS devices is not viable.
It happened at all. Getting banned from the app store because your framework had a bug would bankrupt most developers. I’m lucky I got a warning. Updating a demo app on the app store should be part of the pre-release process.
It wasn’t hotfixed immediately. Contrary to what you said Epic do release hotfixes of this nature, this one should have made it in.
Apple’s response means Epic don’t talk to them. The platform needs an advocate with Apple. Unity has one.
The good news is I was finally able to talk to Apple on the phone and my account isn’t marked for any termination action yet. Phew.
The bad news is they have confirmed that the above patch didn’t work. Metal Debugger is still in shipping builds:
I’ve applied the patch on MacOS and the build configuration is set to shipping. I don’t have much faith that 4.19 will actually fix the problem either if the patch didn’t do anything.
So again, can I suggest that Epic put a test app through the submission process? Not just Fortnite mobile but some kind of feature demonstration app that’s designed to be released during the preview phase of each engine version so that you catch the issues early.
Does anyone know how I can verify for myself that the library is being included in future builds?
Antidamage, I ran into the same rejection with an app update I tried to push through last month. I had to delay the update.
I’m not sure how to test if an API is include for not; but this is the Pull Request, which has been accepted by Epic into 4.19, which is confirmed to fix the problem:
I was really hoping the QFE fixed the issue. Since it doesn’t, what I’m going to do is create a custom Engine version of 4.18.3 that includes the bug fix in PR 4491. The bug fix is literally two lines of code that need to be added to one file. That’s the only suggestion I can make at this point.
Thanks for the link! I’ve been using UE4 for years, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of QFE’s. Is there a reason they aren’t widely publicized, or why staff don’t post about them in AnswerHub posts? I posted about this issue on AnswerHub, but was told I’d have to make the change myself while awaiting availability of the fix: iOS app rejected due to use of non-public API: MetalTools.framework - Mobile - Epic Developer Community Forums
It might have been released because I made a bunch of noise in this thread about it. The effort was appreciated in any case even if it didn’t work.
I’m going to try to do a source build as well and see how I go, although I feel like I’m going to have trouble getting the plugins I’ve been using to work.
Antidamage, but he is telling to build the source from 4.18 and apply the changes from the PR for 4.19 into it (he said 2 lines), so I think all your plugins would be ok, no?
