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Rejection of Reality: Apple Denies Endgame:Syria
arclightfire writes "Endgame:Syria billed itself as the first game to cover on ongoing war in a mashup of interactivity and journalism. However it seems like Apple is not happy with this idea, as PocketTactics reports; 'Apple's app guidelines have once again tripped up the release of a strategy game rooted in a real-world conflict. Auroch Digital's Endgame Syria has been rejected by Apple's approvals team for violating guidelines section 15.3, "solely target[ing] a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity." If section 15.3 sounds familiar, it's because it was the clause invoked when Cupertino said no to Pacific Fleet back in September – the game ran afoul of the guidelines for including Japanese flags in a WWII naval sim.'"
Something I pointed out the last time this game was covered:
The problem with political games is that... they're still political.
Imagine that instead of making a game about the conflict, the same group had simply put out an editorial saying "Here is what we think about the war in Syria, and exactly what is happening there."
If they did that, and it was promoted as much as a game was, and it was typical media quality, everyone here would jump on it in a minute, pointing out that the editorial oversimplifies the war, and that most editorials are made by people with strong opinions on the subject who may be biased. Or the writer of the editorial may have based it on news reports but been a bit too trusting of them. Perhaps the editorial, while supposedly summarizing the war, leaves out important events. (And that's assuming all the facts in it are literally true.)
But package your editorial as a game, and everyone eats it up, as a "unique gamification approach" which "reports the news in the most entertaining fashion possible". As if a contentious subject suddenly turns into a completely objective analysis just because it was put in something that has cards and a score. Please.
It's propaganda, because you can't play as Assad.
Why are people still stupid enough to trust Apple enough to sink money and development time into their silly, arbitrary little prison-platform?
Yeah! You COULD sell a bajillion copies! If they don't hamstring you and waste all your time and money.
You can imagine that you're Elon Musk and that you're revolutionizing private space travel.
The reality is, on Apple's platform, you're really Robert Stroud.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I'm actually more offended that Apple decides who has a proper topic on their application platform, rather than the topic itself. Yes, it's still political, and we're probably chock full of political bullshit... but I wish there was a bit less censorship here.
Why are people still stupid enough to trust Apple enough to sink money and development time into their silly, arbitrary little prison-platform?
For the same reason a business does anything: it has historically had an attractive return on investment. Into what platform should companies sink development time instead?
Can you release a moddable game through apple that has fake flags and names, and rely on modders to alter flags/names to whatever the user wants? Or does Apple have a lockdown on mods, too?
Why are people still stupid enough to trust Apple enough to sink money and development time into their silly, arbitrary little prison-platform?
Why are people still stupid enough not to read the terms of the market their trying to enter? Beats me.
Watch those corners
Who refused to remove the prophet video from YouTube even after being asked by the POTUS.
While flawed, they have on many occasions stood up for the free internet, which Apple has never done.
There are lots of people killed in Syria every day. Turning this into a game with the hope of making money is cynical and tasteless. So I don't feel the slightest bit sorry about these guys.
And consider that if the game was sold and successful, some people could be very tempted to put a bullet through their heads. Either someone who lost dear friends or relatives in this struggle, or someone who is in danger of losing their power over the country.
just wait till the next earnings release in a week or two, Tim Cook will finally announce Chapter 11
just because they kicked some app back
By another name: Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
The worst part about this is the fapbois will find justifications. For you see, when you wear the rose colored glasses the world becomes filled with roses!
$7 billion paid out to developers? maybe that's why?
how much has the Play store paid out in royalties?
Doesn't sound like a game I want but I checked anyways to see if Google had it or not, if it was rejected, etc. Nope they didn't reject it and it's available on android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gamethenews.syriaendgame
A belittled as we may want to think of it ("silly little platform"), it's actually big. You can reach a lot of people through Apple apps.
It's hard for most to understand the harm of having a corporation, a single entity decide what's acceptable.
And it's especially hard for an overwhelming majority to grasp the concept of distributed, incremental contribution to problems and how one's individual actions play in.
Couple the difficulty of grasping this concept with the difficulty of knowing that there's harm being done in the first place and who can you expect to take the right actions except only the smartest?
Turning this into a game with the hope of making money is cynical and tasteless.
Maybe, but totally protected under the 1st amendment. People and companies churn out tasteless crap all day. Perhaps they should all be censored. Good thing I don't have to buy Apple's crap.
...the game ran afoul of the guidelines for including Japanese flags in a WWII naval sim.
So if Godzilla were to attack New York would Apple deny a sim after the fact because it was unfair to monsters? Its absurd to disallow a game for including historically accurate imagery. The Rising Sun ensign isn't even a current national symbol of any current nation/state.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Android will be more than happy to have it. The same thing happened with Tawkon Apple didn't want it, but Android is open to anyone - (and even Google Play is much more open than Apple's appstore). Mind you, Tawkon requires true parallel multitasking to work the best (i.e. must run while the call is ongoing) which is not the case with iOS: on iOS Tawkon would only monitor the radiation emission at the very beginning of the call - on Android it does this during the call duration).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology – where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!"
Remember when this was the straw-man that Apple was against?
I just would wager it makes more sense not to download and play the game if you find it offensive, not complain and ruin things for people who would enjoy it.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Turning this into a game with the hope of making money is cynical and tasteless.
Maybe, but totally protected under the 1st amendment.
Yup. And Congress has made no law restricting it, just as the 1st Amendment provides for.
If Congress has made no law restricting the publication of a particular kind of work in a particular medium, then what's the anticircumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? There's a DMCA exemption to jailbreak phones but not to jailbreak tablets like the iPad.
Turning this into a game with the hope of making money is cynical and tasteless.
Maybe, but totally protected under the 1st amendment.
True, but this isn't about Congress passing a law to restrict speech - it's about one company deciding not to sell a third party's product...
People and companies churn out tasteless crap all day. Perhaps they should all be censored. Good thing I don't have to buy Apple's crap.
Exactly - those (myself included) who are uncomfortable with either Apple's policies, or the general stranglehold they like to maintain on their ecosystem, are free to buy other stuff :-)
...the game ran afoul of the guidelines for including Japanese flags in a WWII naval sim.
So if Godzilla were to attack New York would Apple deny a sim after the fact because it was unfair to monsters?
The policy in question was about games depicting entities that are real. Despite what Stephen King and Dr Who may have you believe, most adults consider that monsters are not real :-)
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
There is a powerful platform that runs on every iOS device, and is not censored by Apple in any way: the web.
Of course the web is censored by Apple. Apple has refused to support WebGL in Safari for iOS. So how should one make a 3D web game that Apple can't censor?
How much of that $7 billion is in the pockets of Rovio?
Can you show how those developers needed Apple to make that money i.e. that they would not have made that much without Apple's restrictive ecosystem?
Palm trees and 8
Apple refused to allow political cartoon apps in the App Store, even in countries where such software is entirely legal. Apple has a history of bricking jailbroken iPhones. Apple sues reporters, sues hackers who figure out how to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, and tries to exert the most extreme control possible over their customers' use of their products.
Meanwhile, Google allows you to use their search engine to find pornography, to find information on how to block Google's own advertisements, to find information on how to hack software released by Google to do things Google never intended, and so forth. Are they perfect? No, but did we really expect them to be? Frankly, Google has gone beyond what I would expect of a modern corporation in terms of user freedom.
Palm trees and 8
Battleground: Election 2012 - Obama vs Romney
This was political in nature and solely targeted a real government. Wasn't banned.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
The issue is apple. Since when/why would someone rely on and/or trust apple?
Put something out cross platform, everywhere - so that a refusal by Apple means nothing.
I really don't understand how it's this hard for people to recognize that relying on a single platform is an incredibly poor idea. Ever since the inception of "web 2.0" the concept of a platform is broken into a limited functionality/walled garden.
App success is PRIMARILY based on NOT getting rejected by Apple first.
After that, it's totally quality and marketing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
- When you were little, white people came from the sky and asked you to make a sad face for the camera.
- The government, rebels, and UN peacekeepers all shoot at you.
- You've ever drank water from a mud puddle.
- You had a bean for dinner last night.
- You've never seen your own face in a mirror.
- Escalators terrify you.
- The village witch doctor can let you talk telepathically through the cell phone.
- You got a pack of cigarettes for your 10th birthday.
- White people tell you to have savings accounts and get educated, but banks steal your money and schools just produce unemployed people.
I guarantee that no one is stupid enough to blame Apple for the the political content of an app that runs on iOS. Do you blame Microsoft for a violent PC game you bought form elsewhere?
No.
most adults consider that monsters are not real
Totally irrelevant to the point I was making. Stay on point to be an effective, persuasive, writer.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Yeah! You COULD sell a bajillion copies! If they don't hamstring you and waste all your time and money.
95% of apps are approved with little or no incident, and in a timely manner. This idea that they're going to hamstring you is quite outdated.
Maybe, but totally protected under the 1st amendment.
The 1st Amendment says that you can say it. It doesn't say you have to have a platform to do so on.
Besides, they've also put the game out on Android. So it's still available.
Many of us quite frankly do not give two shits about pure "Free Markets".
It is, actually. You can download the APK from their site, as well as from the Google Play store.
Just like it would make more sense to not use platforms who's policies you don't agree with than complain about it?
Why are people still stupid enough to trust Apple enough to sink money and development time into their silly, arbitrary little prison-platform?
Because they'll make more money than doing Android development. Reports from developers that have tried both platforms seem to put it at about 10:1 in terms of return.
And the rules are published to developers. Whilst every set of rules has borderline cases, the sensible developers stick to something that's obviously within the rules, or test out a potentially rule breaching idea with a quick proof of concept.
Given that this game is playable as on line as a HTML5 game, the iOS development probably consisted of little more than copying some boilerplate code for putting a web-view on screen, and loading up the HTML. A hours work for the chance of also being on the App Store, or at least the publicity of getting a rejection. Not a bad investment.
App that violates guidelines is rejected, more at 11.
Do you blame Microsoft for a violent PC game you bought from Microsoft?
No one is stopping this game from being released to a 3rd party app store. Apple are asserting their right to not be associated with it.
Perhaps Apple are just stopping people wasting their time
The only winning move is not to play.
Apple is stopping this game from being installed on iOS using ANY means. Not just from the iOS app store. Let them allow users to sideload apps and then no one can blame them.
Let users have a checkbox saying "Install from untrusted sources at your own risk etc etc". Trust me - no one will blame Apple for offensive games installed that way.
Turning this into a game with the hope of making money is cynical and tasteless.
You mean like Grand Theft Auto, or Wolfenstein? Sure it's tasteless, so fucking what? Everyone has a right to be a boor and a cad if they wish to be.
You know what's more offensive? Your suggesting that these folks don't have the right to be offensive. Nothing is more offensive than censorship.
Free Martian Whores!
Just look at the comments here. Apple just doesn't want that controversy s@$%storm, and the 'they didn't approve it' controversy is a minor fartzephyr in comparison. That rule is specifically there to prevent games like like this, especially ones that won't make them much money. Educating people is approximately nowhere on the list of App Store goals.
That's a different issue. That means users could buy apps without Apple getting a 30% cut.
most adults consider that monsters are not real :-)
You never heard of John Wayne Gacey? Adam Lanza? James Holmes? Charlie Manson? All of them make Dracula and Frankenstein look like girl scouts.
Free Martian Whores!
Shocking! They're as bad as Microsoft!
Oh wait...
I do choose to be how I am, and I do catch flak for being different. That flak is social pressure.
Maybe you don't remember the days before Open Office, receiving important documents you couldn't read or needing to create important documents that you couldn't make without Microsoft software. Maybe you don't remember how many websites were IE-specific, or how it was business suicide to build a site without catering to the IE userbase. Do you think that those pressures weren't real?
You probably care less. It sounds like you don't have to interact in a business environment and maybe you don't have many friends who want to be in touch via Facebook- Oh, but you do use Facebook. Do you also build websites? When did you start web surfing? IE was a thorn in the sides of everyone who wanted a better browser, but folks had little choice except to deal with it -- that's social pressure. You don't have to worry about IE or Office now. It sounds like you didn't experience these things. And the one example of extant pressure, Facebook, you are using. So maybe it's hard for you to understand. Look around, though. There are plenty of other normative things that society smooths the way for, and which swimming against is damned hard.
Don't let your disdain for haughtiness distract you when you think you've caught whiff of it. There's a real issue here.
App rejection is overplayed, mostly by (1) Those that have been rejected for obvious violations that Apple lets you know about in advance, and (2) Fandroids who celebrate every rejection as a repudiation of Apple.
Assuming these rejections are in fact predictable from Apple's restrictions, Fandroids celebrate these rejections as validation of the undesirability of Apple's restrictions.
No, the lottery is a game of chance. Creating apps is a game of skill.
The contention as I understand it is that successfully marketing them is a game of chance.
You claim that "'best apps for...' lists or game reviews" are an appropriate "somewhere else" for end users to discover applications for a tablet operating system. So what are the best practices, once one has developed a quality application, to get it into one of those lists?
GIven the same decent marketing, a bad app will still not be successful, whilst a good app will be.
Is this more true of apps than of, for example, movies? I was under the impression that several critically acclaimed movies still didn't make a profit.
Good apps predominantly get good reviews
But how does an app get in front of a widely followed reviewer in the first place?
Apple doesn't allow porn on the app store, despite the fact that people have sex all around the world. How unjust.
Move along, no sig to see here.