Charlie, The Steak (found iOS game; 2013)
The game's logo.
Status: Found
Date found: 02 Aug 2024 (iPad version) / 04 Aug 2024 (iPhone version)
Found by: Dipper Gaming (iPad version) / Sebastian Hadl (iPhone version)
Charlie, The Steak was an iOS game that was published and developed by DynamicDust's Sebastian Hadl in 2013 and was designed to be a stress-reliever game in which you can torture an anthropomorphic steak which was designed to be annoying for the players. The game gained meme attention in early 2024 due to memes being made about the game's titular character, Charlie, and often being poked fun of and shared around for its absurdist concept, campiness, and very unconventional gameplay method. The game has since been delisted from the App Store with many speculating that it was likely due to its usage of gore or that Apple had 32-bit apps delisted if an app or game isn't eligible to transition to 64-bit, which was the case for Charlie the Steak. The following speculations were later debunked, as the reason was later explained by a developer of the game who stated that the people who run and are in DynamicDust eventually decided to close the company.[1]
There were 4 modes of torturing Charlie in the game, with Well-Done, Medium, Rare and Raw – with well-done being the most “gentle” one and raw being the most aggressive and wildest one. The game was last updated on July 2, 2015.[2] The game took inspiration from the Talking Tom series.
Availability
For a while after it gained community buzz on social media sites such as X or TikTok, no IPA files surfaced in the game. People claim to have a fan-port of the game installed on Android, but no official APK was ever made out of the game since DynamicDust hasn't released the game on Android devices. There are several review videos out of the game that are available to watch on YouTube
Later on, developer Sebastian Hadl confirmed on his Reddit account that a re-release of the game could be coming soon after a discussion about looking through the source code to update it so it could comply with the new App Store guidelines.
On August 2nd, 2024, Archive.org user Dipper Gaming uploaded the game's IPA file to the Internet Archive[3].
On August 4th, 2024, Sebastian Hadl rereleased the game on the App Store due to the game's resurgence in popularity. It is only available in the US as of now, but with a VPN you can install the game in countries other than the US.
Gallery
Images
The app icon.
Charlie, the titular character of the game.
Footage
Videos
External Links
- Subreddit about the search for the game.
- Reddit post by the game's developer showing off a possible re-release of the game.
References
- ↑ Reddit post by the game's developer debunking the alleged reasons why the game was delisted. Retrieved 29 Jul '24
- ↑ Wayback Machine archive of the game's App Store page. Retrieved 26 Jul '24
- ↑ Charlie, The Steak on Archive.org. Retrieved 02 Aug '24