Earlier this week, popular iOS game developer PopCap – the team behind Bejeweled 2, Plants vs. Zombies and Chuzzle – announced that they were launching a sister studio called ‘4th & Battery‘. They also revealed that its first game, Unpleasant Horse, was going to hit the App Store imminently, but it seems Apple may have spoiled their party by rejecting the game due to its “mature content.”
4th & Battery declared their displeasure at Apple’s decision on Twitter, but their tweets disappeared shortly afterwards. Fortunately, Joystiq managed to grab a screenshot of the tweets, one of which read: “WTF? Apple rejected Unpleasant Horse cuz of “mature content?” We thought horses dying in meat grinders was wholesome family entertainment!”
Admittedly, the game does sound a little brutal, but I’m sure it’s a bit more light-hearted than the developer’s tweet would have you believe. Could this be another case of a developer losing out to Apple’s over zealous App Store approval process?
Despite Apple’s decision, 4th & Battery followed up their rant with another tweet that declared their love for the company:
Anyhoo, we still love Apple. Honest. We even had (and liked!) a Newton back in the day. Hope we get an appropriate rating for the game.
They are appealing Apple’s decision and hopefully we’ll be able to decide for ourselves what Unpleasant Horse is like in the not so distant future, however, I think 4th & Battery will have to make a few changes to the game first.
[via Touch Arcade]
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
6 responses to “PopCap’s Sister Studio Gets First Game Rejected by Apple”
I have many Popcap games (all paid for) that I love playing and so do my kids. I’m not upset that they decided to branch out into more mature content, but I am disappointed that I won’t be able to share it with my boys. They always love it when a new game comes out.
If you look at the tweets they mention trying again with a higher rating. That tells me that they weren’t using a 17+ or even perhaps 13+ rating with appropriate warning tags. If so, no wonder they got rejected. 6 year old girls love their ponies and that kind of game would freak them out and piss off their parents if there were no warnings and it was labeled as age appropriate
If the Suicide Girls can have an App where you get a girl to “strip” and “make out with you”, then this should easily pass. More than likely submitted for “too young a crowd”. God knows they get far worse on public access and music videos anyway… But, that’s Apple.