Last week, Valve announced the beta launch of their new service Steam Link on Android devices. This new app allows gamers to stream their full games library through their phone over a wireless connection.
At the time, the company said that approval was pending from Apple to allow the app to launch on iOS devices at a later date. Only now, there has been a slight snag in that plan.
Today, Valve put out a press release stating that after initially approving their application, Apple turned around and rejected Steam Link just days later.
The press release itself was short, so the entire text will be included below:
On Monday, May 7th, Apple approved the Steam Link app for release. On Weds, May 9th, Valve released news of the app. The following morning, Apple revoked its approval citing business conflicts with app guidelines that had allegedly not been realized by the original review team. Valve appealed, explaining the Steam Link app simply functions as a LAN-based remote desktop similar to numerous remote desktop applications already available on the App Store. Ultimately, that appeal was denied leaving the Steam Link app for iOS blocked from release. The team here spent many hours on this project and the approval process, so we’re clearly disappointed. But we hope Apple will reconsider in the future.
I’m not entirely sure what they mean by “business conflicts”, but it must be fairly major if it caused Apple to revoke what was initially an approval. While it is still possible that Valve and Apple will reach some kind of agreement in the future, at the moment it looks like iOS users will not be able to take advantage of the new features.
Android users can continue enjoying the beta version of the app as they await a full launch. Steam Link is available on the Google Play store for Android users running Android 5.0 and up.