Apple Yanks "Sweatshop Themed" Game From App Store

First time accepted submitter danhuby writes "Apple have removed sweatshop-themed game Sweatshop HD by UK developers LittleLoud from their app store citing clause 16.1 — 'Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected.' According to the PocketGamer article, Littleloud's head of games, Simon Parkin, told Pocket Gamer that 'Apple removed Sweatshop from the App Store last month stating that it was uncomfortable selling a game based around the theme of running a sweatshop.'"

Re:Apple

[epiphani]

Nope. This exact thing has happened before - except it was Nike, not Apple:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blnike.htm [about.com]

Re:Android

[PyroMosh]

While I agree with you in principal (the ability to run whatever I wish is one of the reasons I use Android and avoid iOS myself), in practice, what you describe is the same on both platforms.

If I'm selling a commercial app, even on Android, the built-in store is more or less the only avenue to making money. Google's store has rules [google.com] just like Apple's does.

Sure I can sell through Amazon or some of the other third parties instead. But this obviously greatly diminishes my potential market (and they will likely have similar rules too). What percent of Android users ever install a third party store? What percent are even aware they can do so?

If you're talking about commercially selling software to sideload, the problem is even worse. Most users have no idea this is possible. So in effect, if you're investing a lot of money into a project and Google says "no", the results aren't much different from Apple saying "no".

Re:Block this dick from posting

[DrXym]

There is a difference between censorship and moderation. I see no issue with slashdot insta-modding particular kinds of post down to -1, without requiring human mods to do it, e.g. anything linking to goatsex for example or posts with certain keywords that appear within 30 minutes of a story going live.

They could even rank it down to a -2 which is only visible to the randomly designated mods so they can rescue posts that end up there without subjecting everyone else to that shit.

Re:Tapper?

[vux984]

What about the Tapper game that's been around since the dawn of time ...

You do realize Tapper was reworked to use Root Beer in most of its iterations including a version for Arcades, the version for Coleco and Atari, and even the version on Xbox Live all are "Rootbeer Tapper"... even the Tapper scene in "Wreck it Ralph"; looks like the original Tapper game, but the Bud logo is not present, and you can clearly hear a patron interrupt Tapper to order a Root Beer.

Probably not the best example.