For a game to run on a specific device, it needs to know how to communicate with that device’s many components, such as its GPU or microphone. To support this communication, console, smartphone, and PC operating systems produce “software development kits” (or SDKs) that include, among other things, “collections of APIs.” In theory, a developer could write their own “driver” to talk to these components, or use free and open-source alternatives. OpenGL is another collection of APIs used to speak to as many GPUs as possible from the same codebase. But on consoles and Apple’s iPhone, a developer
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