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Apple Bans Game App That Criticizes Smartphone Production
An anonymous reader sends word that Apple has removed from the App Store a game called Phone Story, which walks players through the creation of a smartphone, highlighting many of the negative aspects. There are four brief stages: running a mining facility in the Congo, saving suicidal factory workers, handing out phones to oblivious consumers, and generating e-waste through planned obsolescence. Apple said Phone Story violated sections 15.2, 16.1, 21.1, and 21.2 of the App Store guidelines, which make reference to "objectionable or crude content" and "offensive or mean-spirited commentary." A short video of the game has been posted at Kotaku.
Also, it's not an "app" and it's not a "game."
It's propaganda, plain and simple.
Good luck marketing an anti-Valve game on Steam, anti-Microsoft game on XBOX Live, or an anti-Sony game on the PSN.
Apple is setting the correct precedent here.
Oh, but the independent, trendy vanguard of the people that is Apple would never attempt to do anything bad! Why, whatever they do has to be good; for, simply their doing it makes it good!
Hark! I hear now many rushing to justify Apple, by quoting other worse companies, or such by ingenious logical methods as to perplex lesser men entirely. Surely, this is simply another reason that Apple is the great organization that it is!
Great Intellect...
The Developer of the App knew they were going to get ban, it was obvious. Its like the child wanting to get up the parent skin just for the fun of it. It's no fun doing in on Android because they don't have guidelines. This is basically just to get attention. In reality most users like Apple's App review system, it get rid of the obvious garbage.
We are currently considering ...
* Release a version for the Android market and jailbroken ios devices.
Yeah, cause Android phones are made from hemp by fair trade workers.
This is all just a publicity stunt, seems to be working quite well. Congrats to the developer no one had ever heard of.
Who says it's a justification of Apple to point out that they get singled out in this sort of thing.
1) Person A is doing bad things!
2) Well, Person B does identical things, perhaps you should criticise them too.
1) You're just trying to justify Person A's actions!
2) Err? I guess you could try and twist it that way. Am I not allowed to mention Person B's infractions at all when talking about this? Does mentioning them somehow make it look like I'm trying to give Person A a pass?
1) Whatever fanboi!
If you censor criticism, you're not merely losing the moral high ground, you're also validating the criticism (after all, why would you censor something if it wasn't true?) as well as giving it publicity (see the Streisand effect.)
The correct thing to do is to face the criticism. If they are wrong, then you prove it (tour of the facilities maybe?). If they've unearthed something wrong, then you publicly apologize and fix that. Under no circumstances try to weasel out through semantic loopholes or by putting down straw men.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!