Apple has quietly unleashed a number of changes to the way it reviews apps submitted to its app store, strengthening its application of some rules, allowing exemptions for others, and rewriting another completely.
The changes will particularly affect game developers, who have been given greater freedom to make expansive high-quality games while seeing their ability to effectively market them curtailed.
But the changes may, however, not calm the fears of developers who have long worried that the company’s app review process rests ultimately on capricious reviewers making inconsistent determinations of what is and isn’t allowed, a fact which is “burning a lot of developer motivation” according to one iOS coder.
Guns removed from adverts
A long-standing rule (Rule 3.6) of the App Store tells developers that, regardless of the age rating of the app they are creating (which can be anything up to 17+), “Apps with app icons, screenshots, and previews that do not adhere to the 4+ age rating will be rejected”.
Apps in the 4+ category must contain “no objectionable material”. Given even “mild or infrequent occurrences of cartoon, fantasy, or realistic violence” are hived off to the 9+ category, it’s a tight limit on what can be depicted in the advertising material for any given app, but one which was until now sparsely applied.
However, game developers for iOS have reported the company has started to apply the rule in a new context: apps are being rejected for having icons or screenshots that depict guns.
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Pocket Gamer reports that titles including Gang Nations, Bullet Rush, and Apple Editor’s Choice-winning Tempo have all been asked to alter their marketing materials to remove or pixelate guns. Even Rooster Teeth vs Zombiens, a game which features the hero holding a gun-shaped accessory for the Nintendo entertainment system, had to change its icon so he was instead holding a baseball bat.
Apple’s app store rules do warn developers that “this is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.” But the company declined to comment on the new applications of long-standing rules to games which seemingly pose no new questions at all.
Real world drug use
Another set of reconsidered rules do seem to be prompted by a change in situation. Apple has long banned any app to do with real-world drug use, citing guideline 2.18: “Apps that encourage excessive consumption of alcohol or illegal substances, or encourage minors to consume alcohol or smoke cigarettes, will be rejected”.
But as legalisation and decriminalisation of marijuana has swept the United States, apps pertaining to consumption of the drug don’t immediately seem to fit into any of those categories. It’s not alcohol, nor is it illegal, and it appears Apple agrees that the time has come to lift restrictions on it.
The first beneficiary of the policy is Massroots, a social networking app for stoners. It had initially been pulled from the app store, but was reinstated after the developers agreed to limit membership to only those users who are in one of the 23 American states where marijuana is legal (in the majority of those, only for medicinal use).
The app’s developers confirmed they would be abiding by the new rules. “We do not take this task lightly. Over the coming weeks, we will be implementing new features to strengthen our compliance even beyond what is currently required.”
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Larger apps
One change has been explicitly announced by Apple. “The size limit of an app package submitted through iTunes Connect has increased from 2 GB to 4 GB,” the company confirmed to developers, “so you can include more media in your submission and provide a more complete, rich user experience upon installation”.
Although the update doesn’t affect the size of apps which can be downloaded over a mobile network — still capped at 100MB, in one of Apple’s last concessions to the bandwidth demands of carriers — it allows for apps downloaded over Wi-Fi to be twice as large as they were before.
The rules update will mainly affect games, the most upmarket of which were already pushing hard against the 2GB limit (for instance, XCOM: Enemy Within takes up 1.96GB of space). A 3D game with textures high-resolution enough to appear on a retina iPad screen will find the extra space gets burnt through quickly.
But not everyone will be happy. With Apple still selling 16GB iPhones, some users may well find that just one or two of these behemoth apps are all they can store on their devices if they want to use them as normal.
