Days after developer Tommy Refenes publicly lambasted the iTunes App Store for its lack of quality, Apple has removed Refenes’ novelty game Zits & Giggles from its app catalog.
Zits & Giggles — a game in which players pop virtual pimples — was originally priced at 99 cents when it launched in March. After sales tapered off, Refenes upped the price of his game to $15.
“The day I put it up to $15,” Refenes noted at last week’s Game Developers Conference, “three people bought it.”
Sales continued to roll in at $50, and then at $100. Refenes then raised the price after every recorded sale, eventually topping out at $399.99.
Apple offered no explanation for the app’s removal, and Refenes’ attempts to contact the company have received no response to date.
“They gave me no explanation at all as to why they took it down,” Refenes told consumer blog Kotaku. “I’m guessing they are mad that I said their store sucks and the iPhone is a Tiger handheld and they took it down.”
Speaking to FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra, Codeminion developer Maciej Biedrzycki says he is “still looking” for a way to bring the popular color-matching puzzler StoneLoops! of Jurassica back to the App Store following its removal in October.
Apple removed StoneLoops at the request of Luxor developer MumboJumbo, who allegedly accused Codeminion of “infringing Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code” — charges that Codeminion denies.
Biedrzycki noted similarities between the StoneLoops situation and Apple’s recent decision to remove the multi-function utility application AppVault from the App Store. According to AppVault developer Ray Wenderlich, AppVault was taken down after a copyright infringement claim from a competing application, AppBox.
In a detailed comparison, however, Wenderlich argues that AppVault bears little visual resemblance to AppBox, and claims that his own effort is far superior to the competition. The copyright infringement claim only surfaced after AppVault surpassed AppBox in Apple’s sales charts.
Despite Wenderlich’s protests, however, Apple has yet to issue a response or provide recourse. Wenderlich has since started a petition to encourage open competition in the App Store.
“The authors of AppVault are running a petition trying to convince Apple to change their policy which clearly allows abuse and unfair competition,” said StoneLoops developer Maciej Biedrzycki. “Of course we’re supporting the petition, as we are still looking for a way to bring StoneLoops! back to the AppStore.”
A number of iPhone developers report that their Unity-powered applications have failed Apple’s approval process, and are denied release in the iTunes App Store.
A thread at the Unity Community forums reveals that these applications have the potential of using non-public APIs accessible via the Unity game authoring tool. The same APIs were allegedly used by iPhone social RPG developer Storm8 to obtain, store, and transmit player phone numbers without prior permission.
Though Storm8 claims that its applications have been updated to remove this functionality, many of the company’s games, including iMobsters, World War, and Zombies Live, have since been removed from the App Store and are no longer available for download.
Ravensword: The Fallen King, an open-world RPG to be published by Chillingo, was among the handful of Unity engine games to be denied an App Store release.
Many Unity developers received their rejection notices from Apple earlier this week, despite explaining that the included APIs were not used to harvest phone numbers. Several affected apps included no network functionality at all.
Unity notes in another forum thread that the issue has been addressed, and the current engine update has removed the flagged APIs. Authors of rejected apps will need to download the new engine update and resubmit to Apple’s approval process.
[UPDATE: Unity has also published a weblog post on its official website explaining the problem and the fix.]
StoneLoops! of Jurassica, one of the iPhone’s most popular puzzlers, has been removed from the App Store following a complaint from Luxor publisher MumboJumbo.
According to a blog post at Codeminion’s website, MumboJumbo accused the StoneLoops! developer of “infringing Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code.” Apple notified Codeminion of the complaint earlier this month.
Luxor
MumboJumbo also claimed that App Store customers searching for Luxor would instead find StoneLoops! listed among the search results, due to Codeminion including a review quote that cited a similarity between the two games.
Codeminion volunteered to remove the quote, and then heard no further response from Apple. On October 23rd, still with no reply or prior warning from Apple, StoneLoops! was removed from the App Store.
Atlantis Sky Patrol
Curiously, Codeminion notes that the decision was not Apple’s. According to the developer, Apple instead asked MumboJumbo whether Codeminion’s offer to remove the offending quote was a sufficient enough act to drop the complaint. Mumbo Jumbo persisted, and StoneLoops! was delisted. Similar titles like Tumblebugs, Blackbeard’s Assault, and Atlantis Sky Patrol are still available for sale.
Despite its innocent isometric looks, Mobigame’s Edge ($4.99) has been one of the most controversial iPhone games to be released this year. Now, after a long, bewildering battle of copyright issues and multiple removals from the App Store, Edge is once again available for purchase in all regions.
2) Edge is voluntarily removed from the App Store over what is later discovered to be a trademark dispute. The short version: Edge Games CEO and International Game Developers Association (IGDA) board member Tim Langdell claimed to own the worldwide trademark for the word “Edge” and related phrases, and requested that Mobigame either license the name or remove the app.
4) Langdell contacts Apple to have Edge removed from the App Store again. Apple informs Mobigame that the game will not be restored until all trademark disputes have been settled.
Though Edge has not been available for purchase since July, Tim Langdell has been the subject of much discussion in the months since.
Responding to claims that Langdell used his trademark to bully small-time developers, his peers at the IGDA planned a meeting to discuss his removal from the organization’s board of directors. Before a vote could be called, Langdell resigned.
Langdell was dealt another blow last month when EA DICE, developer of the console title Mirror’s Edge, filed a complaint to have Langdell’s “Edge” trademark nullified in all regions.
Though no action has been taken in EA DICE’s suit, Langdell’s dispute with Mobigame appears to have been settled, and Apple has restored the game to the App Store under the new title Edge by Mobigame. A free Lite version is also available.
The troubled tale of Manomio’s iPhone Commodore 64 emulator app just got a little bit more dramatic. Manomio initially met with a flat rejection from Apple earlier this year for the emulator’s reliance on downloadable executable files and ability to run user-submitted BASIC code, and has been working to resolve these issues in the months since.
After some concessions and major modifications, the emulator was approved for sale in the App Store over the weekend. Commodore 64 for iPhone boasted a lineup of several officially licensed C64 games for users to legally download and play, including Dragon’s Den, LeMans, Jupiter Lander, Jack Attack, and Shipwreck.
Today, however, the app has been removed from the App Store following a discovery that BASIC code entry was not removed at all, but was instead hidden from users. Soon after Commodore 64 for iPhone’s release, users discovered a workaround that permitted access to BASIC programming, and Apple subsequently removed the emulator from the App Store as a result.
IUGO’s microgame compilation A.D.D. made an unusual debut in the App Store several months ago. Released only as a free Lite demo — with no paid version available for purchase — A.D.D. was nevertheless a memorable experience, successfully combining a juvenile sense of humor with quick-draw gameplay scenarios inspired by Nintendo’s Wario Ware series.
In an announcement yesterday, A.D.D.’s developers revealed the reasoning behind the unusual release strategy — and it wasn’t intentional. Both free and paid versions of A.D.D. were meant to launch at the same time, but for unspecified reasons, Apple approved the Lite edition and held back the paid version.
This isn’t unusual, as many apps have seen delays and rejections due to unexpected violations of Apple’s standards for content. What makes this story noteworthy is that A.D.D. Lite launched nearly three months ago. To this day, the full version of A.D.D. remains stalled in Apple’s approval process.
Just when it seemed that Edge’s long-running legal battle had finally cooled, developer Mobigame has been dealt yet another critical blow. Its acclaimed puzzler Edge has again been removed from the App Store.
This time, however, Mobigame notes that the removal was not voluntary, and is not only limited to the United States and the UK App Stores. The action is worldwide, and possibly permanent. Edge has also disappeared from iTunes’ App Store Turns 1 feature, after being recently honored as one of Apple’s “favorite games” in the App Store’s first year of operation.
It’s assumed, but not yet confirmed, that “Edge” worldwide copyright owner Tim Langdell has requested the game’s removal. An attorney representing Langdell served Mobigame with a draft complaint last week.
In a strange turn of events, Edge’s most recent trouble occurred hours before Apple’s approval and release of Edge Lite, a free demo version that contains a handful of levels from the full game.
Odds are that it’s going to be a few hours or days before any action is taken against Edge Lite, so if you’ve ever wanted to give the game a shot, you’d be advised to load up iTunes immediately and commence downloading. If aggressive legal proceedings continue, this might be the very last chance anyone gets to play Edge in its current form.
[Edit: According to a forum post at TIGSource, Edge has been restored and is available for purchase in all regions except for the United States, the UK, and Germany. Apple has told Mobigame that Langdell's claims need to be resolved before Edge can be purchased worldwide.]
Box Shaped Games claims that it has received an “unfair” rejection from Apple after recently submitting what would have been its debut App Store title, the ragdoll pain simulator Max Injury.
Soon after submitting Max Injury, the company received a standard Apple rejection notice, which simply stated that the application featured “objectionable content.” Developers have criticized Apple’s review process in the past, claiming that its nebulous guidelines provide little insight into what kind of content is acceptable for App Store release.
Box Shaped Games calls its rejection into question, citing Apple’s approval of similar titles like Ouch! and Mr. Smith. Ouch! allows users to virtually abuse a ragdoll figure that reacts realistically to injury, while Mr. Smith features a human-like character in a number of dangerous and painful situations.
I’d personally speculate that Apple based its rejection on the fact that Max Injury’s gameplay, which involves pushing a character down a flight of stairs, is more easily reproducible in the real world than the fantasy situations found in Ouch! and Mr. Smith. It’s unlikely that Apple will elaborate on the reasoning behind its decision, however.
Box Shaped Games plans to resubmit the title at a later date with less realistic character models, in hopes that the changes will pass Apple’s approval process. A video of the rejected version of Max Injury is below.
In an unexpected move, publisher ngmoco announced that its acclaimed action-puzzler Rolando would be pulled from the App Store following the impending release of Rolando 2.
The original Rolando has remained an App Store favorite since its initial release in December, and has received several free batches of expanded content in the months since. Though the title would no longer be available for purchase after Rolando 2′s release, ngmoco hinted that Rolando might reappear in the future after being updated to be compatible with the company’s Plus+ social networking platform.
The announcement sparked an outcry among fans, and ngmoco issued a response soon after the initial update.
“You’ve roared and we’ve listened,” the company’s official Twitter feed stated. “Rolando will stay put on the App Store.”
ngmoco also announced plans to reissue its previously removed puzzler Topple. Rolando 2 will be released on July 1st.
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A number of iPhone developers report that their Unity-powered applications have failed Apple’s approval process, and are denied release in the iTunes App Store.
