Apple Is Rejecting Games For Having Images Of Guns

Apple Is Rejecting Games For Having Images Of Guns

Apple has started to reject mobile games from the iOS app store for displaying guns in their promotional material and app store icons. So far, the regulation hasn’t had an impact on actual in-game content.

First reported by Pocket Gamer, mobile developers began receiving rejections from Apple on “iTunes Connect”, the portal through which the company provides feedback on app store games, in late January. The change was sudden enough that developer Orangepixel, which had released its mobile game Gunslugs II on January 16th, first learned about the new policy when it tried to release an update for the game roughly two weeks later, Orangepixel’s Pascal Bestebroer told Kotaku in an email.

“[The] rejection was only about one screenshot,” Bestebroer said. The image had been approved by Apple previously for the game’s original release. “The update was rejected by Apple because of the ‘violence’ in the screenshots (side note: Gunslugs 2 uses pixel-art, tiny 12×12 main characters and 1×1 blood pixels).”

Bestebroer said that the impression he got from Apple was that the company was that the promotional material for Gunslugs II had to be appropriate for a “4+” age rating:

The idea behind it, from what I understand, is that even tho the app has a 12+ rating, they do need icons and screenshots and basically the store-page to be 4+ rated. So screenshots should not show anything that is below the 12+ rating.. which is a bit hard to do for most action games.

Orangepixel didn’t end up changing the offending material, choosing instead to push back on Apple’s decision.

“I tried discussing it with them,” Bestebroer said, “explaining that if I search for ‘zombie’ or ‘call of duty’ on the app-store I get a lot more violent images then mine… finally I posted about it on my blog.”

The blog post, titled “Apples rejection freaks me out,” brought more attention to the issue. After that, Bestebroer said, “the game was approved within an hour or two.” He’s also released another update since then, which “got approved without problems.” Other developers haven’t had the same success pushing back against Apple, however. Since the regulation only applies to promotional material rather than actual in-game stuff, it’s much easier for developers to change the icons or screenshots for their game than appeal Apple’s rejection — a process that could preclude a game from receiving valuable updates.

It’s not clear how wide-ranging Apple’s new regulation is, or how many mobile game developers have been affected by it. Pocket Gamer’s story identifies four developers who’ve received rejections from Apple. When asked, a game developer confirmed this story for Kotaku but later asked us not to publish what they had said.

I reached out to Apple for comment on this story, and I will update it once I hear back.


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