Just yesterday we reported the news of the iOS game-maker Big Fish Games that was about to launch a subscription-based gaming service for iPad.

The service, apparently already been approved by Apple, would have granted unlimited access to the company’s games for a monthly fee of $4.99.
This should have happened via an application that had already been introduced into the iTunes App Store since last week but the subscription bit was disabled ahead of the official launch by the developer. The app is called Play Instantly! but it’s currently not available.

Big Fish Games announced the new game streaming service in a press release on Wednesday morning and soon after activating the subscription service Apple yanked the app from the App Store.

[Big Fish Games founder Paul] Thelen said he was surprised by the move because Big Fish had worked with Apple for several weeks to ensure that it met the requirements for recurring monthly charges made through the App Store, a method most commonly used by magazines and newspaper publishers.

“It was officially approved,” Thelen said. Apple had even seen the app’s press release before it went out earlier today, he said.

Apple, that was going to earn 30 percent of the subscriptions paid by users, has not given an explanation for that.
While we wait for an official reason, I was thinking of a possible explanation: to be able to run a game on the iPad without downloading the game some additional binary code would need to be installed and run on the device and this could be one of the reasons.

(Via)