One thing that has made me reluctant to purchase apps is finding some of them delisted in my own account down the road
There's been games that I can no longer download. Apps that are as if they never existed with it not even showing up in purchase history if it weren't for old email receipts. It's pushed me more towards Foss when it is an option.
I wish Android would do better in that department. How does iOS handle old apps it delists. Is it still downloadable for the user who bought it at least?
I agree that it sucks, but it's most likely because 1) the app was removed for some policy reason, or 2) the app targets an older version of the Android SDK that you shouldn't install on newer devices for security reasons. I have some old apps I don't want to update that fall into both of these categories.
It would be nice if there was a non-official way to install these old apps, like if they were archived on archive.org or something similar.
Apkmirror has some old versions.
Many years ago, delisted apps used to stay on your IOS device but if you ever uninstalled them, they'd be gone for good. No idea if that's still the case.
Yes this is still the case, I can still download Alien Blue for instance. I tried using it for fun 2 weeks ago and it was working absolutely fine still. Now it probably finally broke though, but I can still download the app from my purchased apps list.
Edit: Just tried it and reddit still seems to be working just fine on Alien Blue. That was unexpected lol.