After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the App Store’s charts. But the increased attention also brought the threat of legal action, as Adobe targeted Delta for sporting a logo that looked too […]
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Microsoft will launch its own mobile game store in July, the company announced at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. Xbox president Sarah Bond shared that the company plans to bring its first-party portfolio, which includes titles like Candy Crush and Minecraft, to the mobile store at launch. Microsoft then plans to open up the […]
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Video game emulator Delta’s decade-long struggle against the iOS App Store began with a school-issued TI-84 calculator.
When Riley Testut was a sophomore in high school, he showed his friends how to load illicit software onto their bulky graphing calculators. Such behavior was generally discouraged at school, but he wasn’t plotting to cheat on a test. He was simply traversing the Viridian Forest, surfing across the Kanto seas and collecting gym badges.
“The teachers didn’t think we were playing Pokémon,” Testut told TechCrunch. “They were just like, ‘Why is everyone so into their calculators?’”
By 2014, when Testut was a high school senior, the only way to install a retro video game emulator on an iOS device was to jailbreak it. But Testut didn’t want to damage his then-state-of-the-art iPhone 4. So, he spent months building an app that would let him play GBA games on his phone without voiding its warranty. That app became GBA4iOS.
Millions of people swarmed to GBA4iOS, reveling in the glorious experience of playing Game Boy titles on a palm-sized phone. Even Time Magazine wrote about it. But GBA4iOS was too successful for its own good and, soon, Testut had to face an adversary more formidable than Team Rocket: Eight months after the app’s release, Apple patched the loophole that made GBA4iOS possible, quashing his app in the process.
“For a brief, glorious, few months, you had experienced what it was like to make an app that was used by millions — despite it being one that by all accounts ‘shouldn’t exist,’” Testut explained in a recent blog post, reflecting on his experience over the last decade. “You knew you were living on borrowed time, but it just felt wrong that an app this popular can never exist on iOS.”
Video game emulation is complex to pull off, but it’s simple for the users. You download an emulator — usually open source, like ePSXe for PlayStation titles, or OpenEmu, which can emulate a bunch of consoles — and then get games to play on it.
But that’s where the issue lies: Finding a software copy of games, usually housed in a .ROM file, to use with these emulators is not as easy as buying games on the Nintendo eShop. You can buy hardware to legally extract the game file from old video game cartridges or discs that you own, but an easier way to play really old games is to just download their .ROM files for free from the internet — that’s basically piracy.
Downloading an app like Delta has never been illegal, but downloading the game files you need to play can be.
Given his prior experience, Testut was shocked when Apple changed its rules around emulators a few weeks ago. He uploaded Delta, a more refined version of GBA4iOS, and suddenly, he became the developer behind the No. 1 app on the App Store. Two weeks after release, Delta is still topping the charts of entertainment apps and holds the second spot on the free apps charts. According to app intelligence company Appfigures, Delta has been downloaded about 3.8 million times in two weeks.
“It’s surreal how good the reception has been, and how many people are playing it,” he said. “This is the app I’ve been working on for 10 years.”
Testut hadn’t just been a sitting Psyduck since GBA4iOS faded away a decade ago. He went to the University of Southern California to study computer science. Soon after, he happened to attend a Super Smash Bros. players meetup, where he crossed paths with Shane Gill, an engineering student who has now been his roommate for nine years and his business partner for five. They even have the same birthday.
Of course, Gill had also used GBA4iOS in high school, and he was excited to find out that his new friend was behind the app. He shared Testut’s drive to give app developers the freedom to access an audience without Apple as a middleman.
“There are more people like Riley and just so many developers that make these really cool things,” Gill told TechCrunch. “And just because it’s an iPhone, they can’t share it the same way.”
Emboldened by his experiences as a teenage developer, Testut teamed up with Gill in 2019 and launched AltStore, an app store designed for sideloading apps onto iOS devices. For most of its existence, AltStore was only usable on Windows and MacOS, but due to changing regulations in the European Union, it now has a legitimate way to become available on iPhones, as Apple was forced to allow iOS users in the EU to download apps from outside of the App Store.
So why did Apple just change its stance on emulator apps so suddenly? Apple did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. It could have something to do with increased regulatory pressure on Apple, as it was recently sued by the U.S. Department of Justice over antitrust concerns. And according to Testut, it’s a bit too convenient that just as AltStore launched on iOS in the EU, Apple made a small carve-out in its rules to allow Delta to exist.
“Even if the DOJ hadn’t started this [antitrust lawsuit], I think Apple would have done the same thing of allowing emulators in the App Store worldwide,” Testut said. “They just couldn’t have that narrative that the coolest app on iPhone is only in Europe, thanks to European regulators.”
When Gill joined Testut to work on AltStore, he encouraged Testut to set up a Patreon so he could stop taking odd jobs to pay the bills. Now, AltStore’s Patreon earns over $13,000 per month (up from about $10,000 at the beginning of April). In exchange for their monthly contributions, AltStore’s patrons get access to early app betas, like Delta’s test of iPad and SEGA Genesis support, as well as access to a community Discord.
Delta is a free app, so these millions of app downloads aren’t lining the devs’ pockets. Still, Testut and Gill don’t plan to change their monetization model.
“In the App Store, you don’t get this. You don’t have this relationship with your customers. … It’s way more bureaucratic and not personal,” Testut said. “I’m very excited to show that consumers can have a close relationship with developers. I think it works better that way, because we can have Delta be completely free without any paywalls in it, and people can still get access to cool new features early by just donating to us.”
Testut’s vision is pretty emblematic of the game emulation community. At a time when it’s difficult to truly own any of the software you subscribe to, or use, no matter how much money you’ve paid over the years, the effort here isn’t just about reliving childhood gaming memories. It’s archival.
Often, the only way to preserve a 40-year-old game is to rip the software from the old cartridge and build an emulator that can run it, and that’s true for more software than just games.
“This is art that existed 40 years ago. Developers don’t own the IP anymore, and there’s no way to share it with people,” Gill said. “So unless somebody puts it out in some form, it’ll just be lost to time. That’s something that I think is a bit tragic.”
Thanks to Testut and Gill, it’s never been easier to play retro video games for people who don’t want to step beyond the bounds of what Apple deems legal on iPhones. And it’s all because the company just slightly tweaked its developer guidelines. If just one change to App Store policy can unlock a new No. 1 app, what else have we missed out on?
“This was way bigger than we could have ever hoped for, honestly,” said Testut. “Being able to put Delta in the App Store has just made our message so obvious. We’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make apps that haven’t been able to exist before,’ and then the second Apple allows it, we’re in the App Store and we’re the number one app.”
Apple finally updated its App Store guidelines to allow global developers to host retro game emulators on iOS. Now, you don’t need to jailbreak your iPhone or download any sketchy software — you can get a sophisticated emulator right in the palm of your hand for free on the App Store.
No one is more vindicated by this shift in Apple’s policy than Riley Testut, the developer who made GBA4iOS about a decade ago when he was in high school (when he released GBA4iOS, I showed half of my AP Statistics class how to play Pokémon on their phones during class — sorry, Mr. Cinelli). But back then, you had to sideload the app through a loophole, and eventually, Apple caught on and ruined our fun. By fall 2014, GBA4iOS was dead. RIP.
But things have changed a lot since 2014, and since its launch, Delta has been downloaded 3.8 million times, and two weeks after its launch, it’s still topping the app store charts.
“It’s surreal how good the reception has been, and how many people are playing it,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch detailing the app’s history and development. “This is the app I’ve been working on for 10 years.”
So why the change of heart now, almost 10 years later? It’s probably a mixture of pressure from changing laws in the European Union, as well as increasing pressure for Apple to at least try to stop acting like a monopoly. Now, at long last, Testut has released a Game Boy emulator directly into the iOS App Store, where it has already climbed to No. 1 on the entertainment charts, as well as the free app charts generally. Delta, the emulator, even supports DS, N64, SNES and NES games, in addition to Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games.
If you want to finally play Pokémon on your iPhone, here’s what you need to do:
Maybe you just want to play a classic game from your youth. But don’t sleep on ROM hacking communities, which have been modding retro games for decades. These developers can create professional-quality patches for your .ROM files that transport you into completely new games (but you probably want to do the patching on an actual computer). If you’re bored of Pokémon Ruby, why not try Pokémon Emerald Rogue? Now that Delta is in the App Store, the world is your Cloyster.
Hans Tung, a managing partner at Notable Capital, formerly GGV Capital, has a lot of thoughts on the state of venture today.
Notable Capital is a venture firm with $4.2 billion in assets under management, focusing on investments in the U.S., Latin America, Israel, and Europe.
Tung, whose portfolio includes the likes of Airbnb, StockX and Slack, recently sat down with TechCrunch’s Equity Podcast to discuss valuations, why founders need to play the long game and why some VC firms are struggling.
He also let us know why he’s still bullish on fintech and what sectors in the fintech space have him especially excited.
We also discussed recent changes at his own firm, which evolved from 24-year-old cross-border firm GGV Capital and rebranded its U.S. and Asia operations to Notable Capital and Granite Asia, respectively. GGV’s transformation is the latest in a string of changes we’ve seen in the world of venture capital, including personnel shifts at Founders Fund, Benchmark and Thrive Capital.
Below are excerpts from the interview, which has been edited for clarity and brevity.
TechCrunch: Last year, we talked about down rounds. At the time, you thought they were not necessarily a bad thing. Do you still have that same mindset?
Hans Tung: I’ve been in this biz for almost 20 years. We’re long-term in the way we approach things. And I always know that it doesn’t matter about the markups. This is like getting a poor [report] card, or getting a test exam score, it doesn’t really matter until you actually have an exit. IPO is actually just a milestone, not the end game. IPO is the beginning for public investors to be along for the ride. So if you think longer term, valuation up or down temporarily doesn’t matter as much as generating a big outcome at the end.
I think that whatever it takes to scale the business is what the company and the founders and board need to focus on doing to manage the business the best they can every step of the way.
I think that what founders don’t realize is that this choice is not between shutting down and do a down round, because in that situation, you will choose a down round every single time. The challenge is when you are faced with the prospect of holding on to a valuation, or raise a down round. If you don’t do it, you run the risk of shutting down later. But I’ll tell you if you’re close to shutting down, no one’s gonna invest in you
TC: Overall, with regards to the investing landscape, how different is it so far this year compared to last?
HT: I think it’s a continuation of what we saw in the second half of 2023. Obviously, AI is an outlier. AI is way, way overvalued right now. You could argue that we’re only in the first inning, or the first half of the first inning for AI, so people are willing to overpay…You do see a lot of crazy rounds happening at the beginning of a boom, but there will be bifurcation, and there will be companies that end up doing great, and most companies may not.
For the most part, I still caution founders to not compare themselves with sectors are doing well, but fully focus on managing their business.
TC: How is your pace of investing compared to recent years? How have VC firms been impacted by the slowdown?
HT: I think we’re more at the 2022 level. So more than 2023. But 2021 was an outlier. And it’s not good for business. And it’s not good for the ecosystem. Without naming names, you do see firms being impacted by what what they were doing in 2021 and that has made them slow down a lot more now, which is unfortunate, because many of them are great investors, they’re in great companies, and it’s too bad that they cannot participate as a result of just indigestion.
For example, some companies raised a large round in 2021. And even though the business is growing revenue about 40% to 50% year on year and they can probably IPO soon in the next year or so from a maturity standpoint…but because the valuation they raised in their last round is so high, that they are not at that level of valuation in the current public market, where the multiples have compressed quite a bit. So they have to wait. And as a result, the funds that invested in them in 2021 cannot get cash back, because there’s lack of liquidity and the LPs cannot get money back either. So we don’t have that recycling of money going back to the LPs who continue to invest in new funds. The whole system suffers as a result.
TC: I was surprised to report recently that funding in the fintech space had dropped to its lowest level in seven years in the first quarter of this year. What do you think about that?
HT: I think for fintech, given the high inflationary environment that we had, and definitely high interest rate that’s coming down, but not coming down quickly – it is harder for people to decide about fintech. But if you look at the other set of metrics, financial services as a category, the market cap of all public companies in the banking insurance financial service space is over $10 trillion. And of that $10 trillion, only less than 5% are in fintech companies. And so if we all know that the best fintech companies are growing faster than financial service companies, it’s just a matter of time that low single digit penetration and market cap will increase over time. So it will have ups and downs. Like ecommerce, fintech might not have too many winners, but the ones that can win can have a huge market.
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It’s still unclear whether cloud gaming will ever become the next big thing. The appeal is clear: The game you’re playing runs in a data center near you, and the video output is directly streamed to your local device. When you interact with the game, everything is relayed back to the data center.
When it works, it’s an amazing experience. It’s a flexible, easy way to play games across multiple devices without buying new hardware. That’s why many companies have launched services that let you play games remotely — there’s Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, and Google’s now-defunct Stadia cloud gaming service.
But the vast majority of people still play video games on their own, local devices. A French company called Shadow tried something different by bringing your entire computer to the cloud: It isn’t just cloud gaming, it’s cloud computing. You can access Windows in the cloud and install anything you want. But Shadow hasn’t become a mainstream service either.
Fergus Leleu, Jean-Baptiste Kempf and Yannis Weinbach — three former employees at Shadow — decided to leave the company and try something different with their new startup, Playruo. Instead of letting you play your games in the cloud, their new company lets you play game demos in the cloud.
In many ways, Playruo delivers on the original promise of Google’s Stadia: It lets you launch and play a video game from your web browser without having to install anything. Just like people share Google Docs links to share a document, game publishers can turn a game demo into a shareable link.
Behind the scenes, Playruo’s streaming technology is based on Kyber, a bi-directional streaming technology created by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the CTO of Playruo. Kempf is also better known as the president of VideoLAN, the organization behind the popular open-source video player, VLC. He has also worked on various video encoders and decoders used by some of the largest video platforms, including Netflix and YouTube.
Playruo relies heavily on open-source software components, such as FFmpeg to encode the audio and video streams, and libVLC to decode the stream on your local device. The company uses QUIC for the transport layer network protocol.
I tried a couple of demos in Google Chrome on macOS, and the service worked as expected. You can start playing just a few seconds after clicking on the demo link, and on a solid fiber connection via Wi-Fi, it felt like I was playing a game locally.
There are thousands of games released on PC and game consoles every year. Unless you have a gigantic marketing budget, it’s hard to stand out.
Even worse, game publishers are also competing with old games. Some of the most played games of 2023 have been around for more than a decade — think Minecraft, DOTA 2, GTA V, or League of Legends. It’s arguably one of the reasons why there have been so many rounds of layoffs in the game industry recently.
Playruo’s pitch is that it can be used by game publishers as part of a launch campaign to maximize their chances of success. For instance, at the end of a video trailer, a publisher could embed thumbnail on YouTube with a link to the demo so you can try out the game easily.
Playruo links can also be integrated in game launchers. Imagine a popular Twitch streamer sharing a link to a multiplayer game demo so that viewers can team up with their favorite Twitch content creator.
Unlike traditional cloud gaming services, Playruo’s client here is the game’s publisher, and they pay the startup to offer a demo. Chances are that a demo that becomes viral will lead to increased game sales. Playruo is already working with Old Skull Games to promote Cryptical Path.
“We know the cloud gaming business model pretty well from our past experience. The big pitfall is that the various platforms do everything they can to prevent you from using the service too much,” Playruo’s co-founder and head of product, Weinbach, told me.
“It’s a bit ridiculous and counterintuitive. So we thought about a business model where it’s interesting for us that people stay for a long time,” he said. In other words, a viral demo could be considered as a success for a game publisher.
Playruo will have to make sure that it can quickly scale its fleet of servers (up and down) based on demand. The company relies on public cloud companies that offer virtual machines with GPUs, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Scaleway.
This will be a critical part of Playruo’s model. If the startup has too many servers running without anyone launching demos, it’ll lead to an expensive hosting bill at the end of the month. If the startup doesn’t have enough servers, many gamers will receive an error when they try to launch a demo.
But if it works well, Playruo can act as the top of the funnel for game purchases. After a 15-minute demo, players can get a link to add a game to their Steam wishlist, join a Discord server, or enter their email address to get more information. And they may not even realize that they played a game that wasn’t installed on their system.
Apple News is testing a new game for iOS 17.5 called Quartiles, which requires players to organize a grid of 20 syllables into 5 four-syllable words. Spotted by Gadget Hacks, the interface for Quartiles looks a lot like the New York Times’ newest hit, Connections. Did Apple News sherlock the New York Times?
Okay, Quartiles isn’t exactly like Connections, where you organize 16 words into four cohesive categories of four. It’s maybe closer to something like Boggle, since you’re being tested on your ability to put words together from their components. But there is something about finding groups of four that we seem to find really alluring these days — Connections is now the Times’ second most popular game, after Wordle.
Image Credits: Gadget Hacks (opens in a new window)
Last year, Apple added crossword puzzles and mini crossword puzzles for Apple News+ subscribers. While it may appear odd for a news aggregator to continue investing in games, that’s exactly what has been working for the New York Times. When the paper bought the game Wordle in 2022 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, the purchase brought in “tens of millions” of new users in just one quarter. Over the last few months, the Times’ data shows that users have spent more time playing its games than reading the news.
Apple is just beta testing Quartiles, which doesn’t mean it’s definitely going to appear in iOS 17.5. But given that the New York Times is low-key running a gaming studio now, it’s not a bad idea for Apple to churn out some new, preferably square-shaped games.
Apple finally updated its App Store guidelines to allow global developers to host retro game emulators on iOS. Now, you don’t need to jailbreak your iPhone or download any sketchy software — you can get a sophisticated emulator right in the palm of your hand for free on the App Store.
No one is more vindicated by this shift in Apple’s policy than Riley Testut, the developer who made GBA4iOS about decade ago when he was in high school (when he released GBA4iOS, I showed half of my AP Statistics class how to play Pokémon on their phones during class — sorry, Mr. Cinelli). But back then, you had to sideload the app through a loophole, and eventually, Apple caught on and ruined our fun. By fall 2014, GBA4iOS was dead. RIP.
So why the change of heart now, almost ten years later? It’s probably a mixture of pressure from changing laws in the European Union, as well as increasing pressure for Apple to at least try to stop acting like a monopoly. Now, at long last, Testut has released a Game Boy emulator directly into the iOS App Store, where it’s already climbed to #1 on the entertainment charts. Delta, the emulator, even supports DS, N64, SNES and NES games, in addition to Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games.
If you want to finally play Pokémon on your iPhone, here’s what you need to do.
Maybe you just want to play a classic game from your youth. But don’t sleep on ROM hacking communities, which have been modding retro games for decades. These developers can create professional-quality patches for your .ROM files that transport you into completely new games (but you probably want to do the patching on an actual computer). If you’re bored of Pokémon Ruby, why not try Pokémon Emerald Rogue? Now that Delta is in the App Store, the world is your Cloyster.
Last month, a hacker wreaked havoc during an esports tournament of the popular shooter game Apex Legends, hacking two well-known streamers mid-game to make it look like they were using cheats.
A month later, it seems like the hacking saga may have come to a close with the game developers patching the bug exploited by the hacker.
Because of the hack, the organizers had to suspend the tournament on March 17. Two days later, Apex Legends developer Respawn said on its official X account that it had “deployed the first of a layered series of updates to protect the Apex Legends player community.” Then a week later, the company wrote that it had “added another update that is intended to further protect our players and ensure the competitive integrity of Apex Legends.”
Respawn’s posts don’t clearly say that the updates patched the bugs exploited during the tournament. But the hacker behind the cheating scandal told TechCrunch this week that Respawn’s patches fixed the vulnerability that he had exploited to hack the two streamers.
“The exploit I’ve used in [Apex Legends Global Series] is fully patched,” the hacker who goes by Destroyer2009 said in an online chat.
Destroyer2009, who previously told TechCrunch that he had hacked the two streamers “for fun,” said he didn’t want to reveal any technical details of the bug he exploited, even if it is now patched.
“No one likes when severe vulnerabilities in your product are exposed publicly. I asked my friend and we both agreed that we don’t really want to publicly expose what happened from a technical perspective yet,” the hacker said, referring to a friend he worked with to develop the hack.
Do you know more about this hack? Or other video game hacking incidents? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
Referring to an unrelated botched in-game update by Respawn this week, Destroyer2009 said: “[I] don’t think embarrassing them even more is fair.”
Destroyer2009 said he tested his exploit after Respawn’s announcement of the second update on March 26, although he said it’s possible it was patched sooner because he didn’t have a chance to test it before.
Destroyer2009’s hacks were high-profile, disruptive, and caused a big stir in the Apex Legends community. The two streamers targeted, ImperialHal and Geburten, collectively have 2.5 million followers on the game streaming platform Twitch, and several other Apex Legends players and streamers commented on the news of the hacks on their channels.
Yet, Respawn isn’t being forthcoming about the patches it released. TechCrunch asked Respawn and Electronic Arts, the owners of the development studio, to confirm whether the exploit used by Destroyer2009 is indeed patched, and if so, when it was patched.
But neither Respawn nor Electronic Arts responded to TechCrunch’s multiple requests for comment. The two companies did not respond to requests for comment in the last few weeks either.
Meanwhile, Destroyer2009 said he won’t do any more public hacks for now, because “anything more severe than the [Apex tournament hack] accident will be already considered as a real hacking with all the consequences so [probably] will just play the game until it gets boring as usual.”
The next big thing in mechanical keyboards is magnetic switches.
Mechanical keyboards quickly went from a niche product to mainstream during the pandemic, as everybody was looking to upgrade their home offices — and maybe for a new hobby, too. Brands like Akko, Drop, Ducky, Epomaker and Keychron became household names, and today’s enthusiasts can choose between dozens of different layouts and buy parts from even more vendors.
Since then, things have gotten a bit stale — even as what were once high-end features have migrated to budget keyboards. RGB lighting has long become standard, as the likes of Angry Miao and others continue to find innovative new ways to use it. The number of switches available feels infinite, from the lightest switches for gamers to the heaviest for even the most energetic typist — all in linear, tactile and clicky variants and an endless amount of colors. A few years ago, a gasket-mounted keyboard, which gives you a softer, bouncier typing feel, was something enthusiasts could only find on high-end boards, but now everybody essentially does the same.
In some ways, that’s great: The average build quality of mechanical keyboards on the market has never been higher and prices have come down. But the entire scene has also become a little bit boring. That’s where magnetic switches, with their ability to quickly change the actuation point (the point during the keypress where the switch registers your downstroke), come in.
On a standard mechanical keyboard switch, you physically close an electrical circuit to register a key press. When you push down, the two legs on the stem (the moving part the keycap is attached to) push against two metal leaves that close the circuit.
The shape of that stem and its legs are what actually differentiates a linear switch (think Gateron Red switches on many gaming keyboards) from one that has a more tactile feel (like on a Cherry Brown). Linear switches have smooth stems, while there is a bump on tactile switches that provide that slight moment of resistance as you press down. The overall design of the stem, its legs, the spring the stem sits on and the overall switch housing can drastically change how a switch feels and sounds — but also when exactly the keypress is registered by the keyboard. For a standard Gateron Red, for example, the actual keypress is registered after you press down about two millimeters and the overall travel distance before the stem hits the bottom of the switch is four millimeters.
Mechanical switches are very different. They rely on magnets and springs and activate by sensing changes in the magnetic field. Popularized by Dutch keyboard startup Wooting, these switches rely on the Hall Effect and have actually been around since the 1960s. They still use the same overall design as mechanical switches, with stems and springs, but because there’s no electrical circuit to close, there are no legs on the stem. There is, however, a permanent magnet in the stem and as you press down, the sensor on the keyboard’s PCB precisely registers the switch’s position. And that’s where the most important change comes in: You can change how far you need to press down to register the keystroke.
When you’re gaming, you may want to register the moment you start moving your finger 0.1 millimeter, but then when you are using the same keyboard to type, you can change that to, say, 2.5 millimeter to avoid errant keystrokes. Typically, that’s done with a simple key combo on the keyboard itself or in the manufacturer’s software tools. Because these sensors are sensitive to temperature variations, there’s also typically an option to calibrate the keyboard.
This also allows for a few other smart tricks because you can’t just change where the keypress is triggered but also where it is released. That’s not likely to matter too much to you as you type, but when gaming, that’s what allows you to quickly spam a key as needed (and most tools that come with magnetic keyboards also have a rapid trigger setting), all while this high degree of customization allows you to experiment with your favorite settings without having to physically change to a different switch.
If you want to go overboard, you can even create something akin to a macro by assigning multiple actions to the same key, so that a single keypress registers a different action when you’ve pressed half-way down, as you bottom out and when the switch pushes the keycap up again — and maybe another one somewhere in-between. I haven’t quite found a personal use case for this yet, but somebody surely will.
The one thing you can’t change, though, is the switch’s resistance. Despite all of the talk of magnets, that’s still handled by the spring inside the switch, after all.
One problem here is that there still isn’t quite a standard for these switches, so not every switch is going to work on every keyboard. Depending on the manufacturer, however, you may be able to plug in traditional mechanical switches into the PCB, too (though without the customization benefits of the magnetic switches, of course).
To test all of this out, Akko sent me a review unit of its MOD007B PC Santorini keyboard — one of the latest in its World Tour series and also one of the more restrained designs in that series. Priced at just under $150 (though you can usually get it for around $110 on Amazon), the gasket-mount MOD007B PC comes pre-built with Kailh’s linear Sakura Pink magnetic switches. The PCB also accepts three-pin mechanical switches.
For connectivity, you get the standard Bluetooth and USB-C connections, as well as a multi-host 2.4Ghz option (which requires the included dongle). For wireless operations, the board is powered by a 3600mAh battery.
The 75% case isn’t anything too exciting, with its rather plain polycarbonate case, but unlike even some high-end keyboards, it allows you to adjust your typing angle with the help of its dual-position feet.
Akko used a nice amount of foam inside the case to shape the board’s sound, which is on the clacky side. I prefer a slightly more dampened sound, but that’s 100% a personal preference. The stabilizers are nicely tuned, but there is a noticeable amount of case ping. A few small mods should take care of that, but out of the box, that’s the most obvious negative of this board and I’m surprised that after multiple generations of MOD007 boards, the company hasn’t fixed that. A few small modifications should take care of that, but even at this price point, buyers shouldn’t have to do that.
As for the software, Akko’s own proprietary software tool is competent and easy enough to use. It does what it’s supposed to do and gets out of your way. That’s one thing about a board with magnetic switches: they tend to favor proprietary software over open source solutions like VIA.
This board is all about the magnetic switches, though. I enjoyed experimenting with them quite a bit and even if I didn’t win a single chicken dinner in PUBG testing it, I did get the sense that at the right setting, it allowed me to react just a little bit faster. Your mileage may vary in Valorant and other shooters where the rapid trigger functions may be more important. Either way, though, it’s a fun board to game with.
The switch is a Kailh Sakura Pink magnetic switch with a 50gf bottom-out force. That’s in line with many standard linear switches, though maybe a bit on the heavier side.
For day-to-day typing, it took me a while to find the right setting. I experimented with a few, but in the end, I ended up with Akko’s default comfort setting, which sets the actuation and release points at 2mm. The default gaming setting is 0.5mm, which seems more than fast enough.
While not the most premium board on the market, Akko has created a board that, with the right settings and a few minor mods, is pleasant to type on (if you like linear switches) and makes for a nice gaming platform, too. What matters most here, though, is that this board allows gamers and non-gamers alike to dip their feet into the magnetic switch market without a major upcharge. Is it the best board out there? Not by a mile — but at this price point, it’s hard to beat.
Founded in 2017, Atoms Lanka Solutions is a provider of IT consulting and software development services. Throughout the company’s history, we have worked with over 160 customers from 5+ countries..
