Chess.com stopped working on 32-bit iPads after it passed 2^31 games played

You might have to wait a few days to make your next move on Chess.com if you happen to play the game from a 32-bit iPad or iPhone device.

In a comical turn of events, yesterday the popular platform unexpectedly stopped working on 32-bit iOS devices after its counter clocked a total of 2,147,483,648 games played. In case you’re wondering what the significance of this figure is: It means that Chess.com officially broke the 32-bit integer limit.

As a result of this otherwise triumphal achievement, numerous chess players were suddenly no longer able to play the game from their old iPads and iPhones equipped with 32-bit architecture. The issue came about due to the fact that 32-bit devices don’t support interpretation for numbers higher than 2^31.

32-bit iOS devices are experiencing issues due to limitations interpreting game IDs over 2,147,483,647. Fix should be out in 48 hours :)

— Chess.com (@chesscom) June 12, 2017

The Chess.com support team has since confirmed the technical issues, assuring that the company is currently looking into the matter and that a solution will be available within the next 48 hours.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Meanwhile, avid players can resort to playing on the the web-based version of the platform which is still up and running. Needless to say, iOS devices running on 64-bit architecture remain unaffected – so borrowing a newer device could also be an option.

While rare, Google similarly ran into this issue a few years back when PSY’s smash-hit song Gangnam Style breezed through the 2,147,483,647 limit to break the YouTube counter.

As Chess.com is doing now, Google eventually upgraded the maximum value for its variables to 64-bit integer to eliminate the malfunction.

What is particularly impressive is that with this milestone Chess.com becomes the first online chess platform to cross the 32-bit integer limit.

By comparison, one of its main competitors, Lichess, has managed to clock a total of merely 180 million games since initially launching back in 2010 – three years after Chess.com opened doors in 2007.