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Apple Removes Game Critical Of iPhone Production Process From App Store
by Kyle Orland [Smartphone/Tablet, Art, Production, Business]
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September 13, 2011
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Phone Story, an iOS game designed to highlight workers rights issues in the supply chain and production of Apple's iPhone, has been removed from the App Store due to a violation of Apple's review guidelines.
The game, from Every Day The Same Dream team MolleIndustria, consists of a series of four mini-games "that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West," according to the official web site.
But shortly after the game was announced and made available for purchase on the App Store earlier this morning, MolleIndustria tweeted that it had been removed for violating four separate app store review guidelines (as noticed by sister site IndieGames.com).
The cited guidelines prohibit apps that "depict violence or child abuse," "present objectionable or crude content," "contain false, fraudulent of misleading representations" or fail to "comply with all legal requirements."
Apple's App Store guidelines include many other provisions limiting the type of content that's acceptable in apps, including prohibitions against apps that criticize religion, include excessive erotic or violent content, or that contain "offensive or mean-spirited commentary."
Other content distributed by Apple, including books and movies and TV shows sold on iTunes, are not subject to the same guidelines.
In early 2010, Apple purged roughly 5,000 "sexy" apps from the digital store after a refinement of the App Store guidelines.
MolleIndustria had pledged to donate its 70 percent share of the app's proceeds to various charities, starting with Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior.
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On an unrelated note, an organization named "Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior" would seem to be a charity in the same sense that the National Rifle Association is a charity....
[Edit: I should add that I generally support SACOM's goal of curbing China's exploitative labor practices, as I generally support the NRA's defense of Second Amendment-guaranteed rights. But these are advocacy organizations; calling either a "charity" might be true in some legalistic 501(c)(3)-like sense, but it's a bit of a headscratcher otherwise.]
Sounds like the sort of policy that would hurt growth potential.
Thought admittedly, it's partly our fault -- we have created more examples of games that trivialize serious topics than we do games that do justice to serious topics. Of course, the public also won't let us do serious topics (look at Six Days in Fallujah -- a game criticized to death before it was even released.)
I would not see an problem with it if there were other ways of..."broadcasting" apps on Apples platform( other app repositories or downloading binaries manually).
But this is actually a very peculiar set of circumstances, its like a TV manufacturer decided what NEWS channels to watch.
Since Gutenberg and Marting Luther to News Papers and radio, mass media have had an effect, not all good unfortunately.
The punchline is this: When it comes to mass media, even in the private domain, ownership does not solve the moral and ethical dilemmas.
"ownership does not solve the moral and ethical dilemmas" As long as the private property laws are ethincal and moral (I've seen no argument to the contrary in this country) then yes it does. You have no moral or ethical right to force people to do something with their property just because you think it isn't fair.
That was all i was going to say. since this is not the venue to discuss this.
zing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmhw1cBtnEQ