Apple rejects Tank Battle 1942 for depicting Germans and Russians as "enemies"

http://www.pockettactics.com/news/ios-news/apple-rejects-tank-battle-1942-depicting-germans-russians-enemies/

by Jare • 12 years ago

92 115 12 years ago

tanglesome• 12 years ago

Un-freaking-believable.

And there you go, more arbitrary decisions that should have no place in an "app store". That's why a platform always needs to allow at the very least side-loading of apps, even if it makes it difficult enough for "normal users" to do that, for security reasons. For situations like these when the vendor starts banning apps for their own bogus reasons.

wahnfrieden• 12 years ago

Side loading doesn't help you sell your app if the official store is still the only one most users access.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

This is so dumb it is "get someone fired" dumb. This is going to hit the media as political correctness run amok. I can just hear "Is Apple going to ban history books, too?". Sure, its ok for a half-naked women with a sword to slice up orks, but don't you dare show war-game with actual sides. Is Axis & Allies going to be banned?

SilasX• 12 years ago

I think the decision is absurd too, but how does this generalize to history books? They don't portray one group as "the enemy" and good practice is to actively avoid that.

platz3• 12 years ago

it doesn't. History books and games are different enough in this regard.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

My high school history book of WWII definitely portrayed Germany and Japan as the enemies[1].

Going to other books, I am sure Apple will now ban all the Tom Clancy books.

sspiff4• 12 years ago

I think they do, although that's probably fine. Germany was "the enemy" of the Soviet Union, as was Japan. France was "the enemy" of pretty much everyone else in the Napoleonic wars. There's nothing wrong with labeling someone as "the enemy" of someone else, as long as you don't include a value judgement.

I doubt this game labels "the vile Germans" as "the enemy of the noble Soviets".

moogleii• 12 years ago

Someone higher up (presumably) has already reversed the decision.

pbreit• 12 years ago

Or maybe it was more of a mistake.

In fact it was...the game has been re-reviewed and reinstated. No need to jump to the worst conclusion.

bluedino• 12 years ago

Is Rocky IV available on iTunes?

Mutinix• 12 years ago

I chuckled when I read this but then I actually went and looked it up. What do you know, it is there!

Rocky IV - https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/rocky-iv/id278077103

_delirium• 12 years ago

Apple has a weird view (explicitly stated) that politics are okay in films or books, but not in games.

valarauca1• 12 years ago

"Rocky IV depicts Oceania and Eurasia as enemies despite the two never engaging in an armed conflict. Due to historical in accuracies Itunes Minitruth subsection histosec has re-edited Rocky IV because Oceania and EastAsia have always been at war. Oceania and Eastasia have always been at war."

Patrick_Devine• 12 years ago

Wasn't Rocky IV released in 1985? A year too late!

kunai2• 12 years ago

We never cared about the App Store acceptance guidelines before, because most apps got accepted anyway. Still, there's an intrinsic risk that you take when you push a program to the store, in that YOU do not have control over how your app turns out. Apple has final authority on any changes, and it's really a restrictive environment to be in.

It didn't matter then, but with billions of applications now in the marketplace, the drawbacks of having a fully closed environment for applications are becoming painfully obvious. http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

He said that five years ago, has their bottom line suffered? Do developers now start with an Android app and then go to iOS? This current "outrage", which will almost certainly be overturned on appeal, was caused by a single reviewer and the fact that Apple's guidelines are intentionally vague leaving them wide latitude to control the App Store for brand protection.

kunai2• 12 years ago

Developers start with iOS because it's a better development environment and because the iPhone is a household name, while there are scores of different Android devices. Your argument is irrelevant. The point is that Apple's control over its ecosystem can't be a net benefit in the long term because it doesn't give developers enough breathing room to scale or expand. You're left at the mercy of Apple's approval staff.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

Just because their strengths outweigh this weakness doesn't make it not a weakness. Has their bottom line suffered? I would wager yes. Just because they're still dominant doesn't mean this hasn't hurt them.

This "outrage" was not caused by a single reviewer. It was caused by the capricious and unwieldy app review system that Apple instituted years. IT was caused by the fact that a single reviewer can fuck things up publicly for the entire company. It is a problem of process, not of an individual.

joakleaf6• 12 years ago

Apple sells these products (and takes a 30% cut), so they have some responsibility for what they are selling. They don't want to offend anyone, so they made a list of rules. Their review team interprets rules literally.

We may shake our heads when it comes to WW2, but it is really a grey area.

What if the game was depicting a war between present day religious or political groups? What if it was a game between heterosexuals and homosexuals? What about a racist theme?Would that be OK?

Certainly, some people would be offended. So where do you draw the line if you don't want to offend anyone with the products you sell?

kanja• 12 years ago

My Great-aunt didn't make it out of the camps. WW2 isn't a gray area by any honest interpretation.

joakleaf6• 12 years ago

Gray area in the sense that it actually offends some people whereas most people just shake their head.

melling• 12 years ago

The Russians weren't the enemy in WW2. In fact, their contribution greatly affected the outcome of the war.

Axis and Allies are good names if someone is being historically accurate.

yummybear• 12 years ago

I don't even closely consider this a grey area, unless you consider everything a grey area.

This isn't a disputed current-day event. This is historic, and we're not even dealing with some (even remotely) controversial topic like say concentration camps here.

If you're gonna reject apps that might remotely, possibly, offend some tiny portion of your customers, you might as well just shut down.

Hope this was a mistake by a single employee.

platz3• 12 years ago

However I think books and movies are different from games.

Games aren't purely informational; one inhabits them..

chrisjlee84• 12 years ago

I think you're sensationalizing this. This is a 1942 battlefield game attempting to depict historical accuracy.

Would preferred if they were best friends in this war game and shot rainbows at each others?

cbhl• 12 years ago

If this game was a Wikipedia article, it'd be tagged as saying that it doesn't have a neutral POV. Who do you think the Russans, Germans and Japanese thought were the enemy? Certainly not each other.

joakleaf6• 12 years ago

Sorry "depict historical accuracy". Seriously? It is a game, it doesn't depict anything accurately.

I don't find offensive, but I can that people would; I don't think a WW2 game is particularly amusing for the people who fought in the war and saw their friends die.

sspiff4• 12 years ago

Sure, it's a gray area. But do you think Apple would reject a game depicting the Roman Empire fighting of the Huns? Or the Aztecs vs the Inca? Or is that OK, because we're not familiar with a current group of people that strongly identifies with any of these "enemies"?

I feel like historical content should get a free pass for some of these rules. They'd still have to make a judgement call to decide if this is a racist or otherwise offensive game though.

For instance, a historical game like Europa Universalis[1] allows you to kill, oppress or convert tens of thousands of Muslims or Christians, but that doesn't make it an offensive game. A game like Ethnic Cleansing[2] only allows you to kill dozens or hundreds of people would probably not be allowed though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_IV [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Cleansing_(video_game)

walshemj2• 12 years ago

How is a game different to any other art form?

peelman-• 12 years ago

Just a friendly reminder: Apple has hundreds of reviewers, and turn over is undoubtedly high. The reviews are highly subjective with the Guidelines being what they are and worded how they are, you're going to have different interpretations among the pool of reviewers. Asking for consistency out of that system is insane. That's why there's an appeal process. Taking to the internets to bitch about it and inciting the masses makes headlines, but is just bad business.

untog• 12 years ago

You're giving Apple a free pass.

Reviewers should have sufficient training to be able to make sensible calls without having to go through an appeals process.

rbanffy• 12 years ago

It would be smarter to feed back a rejection through the pipe as a new submission and reject on consensus or majority.

smackfu2• 12 years ago

A rejection with no proposed solution is the most extreme result of an app review. I would think that would get reviewed by someone higher up.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

I could not possibly care less how Apple is organized internally.

A company should not expose their internal bullshit to the outside world. Apple set this system up. If they are unable to run it consistently then they have only themselves to blame. They should either fix it or scrap it.

1ris3• 12 years ago

Taking to the internets to bitch about it and inciting the masses makes headlines, is just the only thing that realistically works. It's unprofessional to use highly subjective guidelines.

kryptiskt• 12 years ago

Taking to the internets to bitch about it and inciting the masses makes headlines, but is just bad business.

Nah, bitching publicly works, all those companies are incredibly sensitive to media stories. Always bitch before the appeals process, make sure their PR department notice you.

zefhous2• 12 years ago

Isn't the word "solely" the key here?

15.3 “Enemies” within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity.

If you could play as both sides it seems like they would allow it. While this rejection seems irrational, I don't think the point is that Germans and Russians are targeted, but that they are depicted as the only enemy.

Every conflict has at least two sides, and it's unthinkable that any game doesn't offend a group of people. However, it seems more reasonable that they should require "fairness" in the sense that both sides should be playable. This takes a game from having a perceived ideological stance to being more neutral, and I think that's the whole point here.

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

Russia and Germany are two separate nations. Nations that were on opposite sides of WWII, no less. I don't see how the game "solely" targets one specific group.

arethuza• 12 years ago

"Nations that were on opposite sides of WWII"

Not all of WW2 - they jointly invaded Poland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

It was after the Soviet invasion of Poland that the infamous Katyn Massacre occurred:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

Which included 7000 prisoners executed by a single man:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin

sspiff4• 12 years ago

If only one nation is playable in the game, the other nation is singled out as "the enemy". If you can only play Germany, Russia is your enemy in the entire game.

However, I think that's a silly distinction to make - you can't just swap nations in every game, since the game mechanics for managing a Soviet nation or army could well be different from those of managing the 3rd German Empire.

zefhous2• 12 years ago

Yes it looks like you are correct. By 1942 they were fighting against each other. I don't know what the game allows, but reading the article I got the impression that those entities were only depicted as enemies. If that's not the case then it appears to be a misapplication or mistake according to the app store rules.

kiiski• 12 years ago

It does if the player can only play as one of the factions. Especially if the factions are really called "Germans" and "Russians". The war was fought between the Axis and the Soviet Union, which included plenty of nations besides Germany and Russia. Also, "Germans" and "Russians" are not the same as "Germany" and "Russia" (there were Germans, for example, who fought against Germany too).

But the article doesn't say much about the game, so I don't know if this was the case.

matt_heimer2• 12 years ago

Imagine you've got a game where the goal is to liberate prisoners from concentration camps being operated by a particular race. You're telling me Apple would be more likely to approve it if you could play as a defender of the camp and the attackers are the enemy.

We like having "bad" people to kill in our killing games. Having some moral (imaged or not) highground makes us feel justified in our killing. If we remove the perceived ideological stance and make the game more neutral doesn't that make the violence pointless? I like to feel good about my violence damn it!

sentenza• 12 years ago

I concede that the point you make is right. However...

DO NOT create computer games about the Holocaust. Even if well-intended, this would be incredibly tasteless.

One can certainly debate whether or not games about WW2 are problematic, but in the case of the Holocaust... trust me. It doesn't matter how elaborate and well-thought-through your argument for making the game is. It is still tasteless.

scrumper• 12 years ago

I immediately thought of Bulge[1], a great WW2 strategy game depicting the eponymous battle. I thought it would support the Tank Battle developer's complaint, but actually it doesn't: the combatants are 'Axis' and 'Allies' - no mention of countries.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battle-of-the-bulge/id521833...

itsdrewmiller• 12 years ago

First they came for the mkv decoding video apps, and I said nothing. Then they came for the WWII simulation games, and I said nothing. Then they came for the alternative browsers, so I switched to Android.

brudgers2• 12 years ago

In Faulknerian terms:

    The past is never dead. It did not even happen.

For students of Santayana:

    If there is no past, we cannot be doomed to repeat it.

The technical term for sarcastic Orwellians:

    Drilling memory holes.

desireco423• 12 years ago

This is new history rewriting present in EU, Germans don't want to be the bad guys anymore, so they ask that formulations from WW I celebrations change. They want us to forget their role in two world wars and would like to reframe those as anything but what it was.

rwissmann2• 12 years ago

I am curious where you get your information from. Got any source demonstrating the 'the Germans' - which I assume is meant to describe either the majority opinion or the official government stance - want to rewrite history regarding WWII? Or asking for anyone to 'forget their role' in it?

Disclaimer: I am a German living in the UK.

desireco423• 12 years ago

Yes, there is big push to redefine everything WW I and II, Merkel officially asked English to tone down celebrations of WW I and those toning down went so much that Russians decided not to participate in charade altogether which was to happen in France and will organize remembrance events on their own. There are attempts to pin start of WW I on Serbs, like they could start the war. So you see where I am going.

So, if it helps, I respect and frankly love german culture and philosophers especially, but honestly since that WW I, germans developed this cycle of going up, being destructive, being destroyed. I see that happening again.

platz3• 12 years ago

This article explains apple's views on the difference between books, movies, and games.

Basically they don't trust games to handle political subjects well.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/15/apple-want-to-criticize-re...

quux• 12 years ago

Didn't/doesn't Nintendo have similar restrictions? I don't think this is such an unreasonable reason to reject an app.

joakleaf6• 12 years ago

I remember that they allowed Wolfenstein 3D, as does Apple;

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/wolfenstein-3d-classic-plati...

bradyd2• 12 years ago

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun was available on the GameCube, where you fight the Japanese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor%3A_Rising_Sun

mpyne2• 12 years ago

There have been quite a few Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games on Nintendo systems where you have to fight German or Japanese enemies.

bradyd2• 12 years ago

Interestingly, Call of Duty is available in the Mac App Store.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/call-of-duty/id416666678?mt=...

noblethrasher• 12 years ago

The one screenshot refers to “Soviets”, but the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are not extant entities.

bambax3• 12 years ago

As I’ve said before, the problem here isn’t the guidelines themselves: hate speech has no place on the App Store.

If you agree with policing hate speech, you have to accept the consequences.

Of course the 1st amendment currently only limits the actions of the US Govt. and corporations are free to ignore it. But this situation can't last.

In a world where every expression of speech utilizes a medium provided by a private corporation, free speech needs to be enforced at the corporate level.

Much like a corporation isn't free to discriminate against a person on the basis of race or religion for hiring purposes, it shouldn't be able to refuse to publish something because it finds the content objectionable.

codelap3• 12 years ago

This is ridiculous, you want to force my company to host your hate speech? Bullshit, you're now removing my rights, to enable your own. It's the internet, build your own platform and say whatever you want.

bambax3• 12 years ago

you want to force my company to host your hate speech?

Yes I do! If you don't want to host hate speech, don't go into the hosting business. Sell groceries or something.

1ris3• 12 years ago

I'm not really a fan of this libertarian "My house, my rules" approach. To a person voicing a controversial (or non-controversial or just plain stupid) opinion it does not matter who exactly silences them. The US constitution might protect from the government, but ultimately it's not exclusively the evil government suppressing one or the other thing, and in the end it don't ever matter who did it. In the end a thing that was considered so important government (usually completely sovereign) might not touch it, goes away.

And no, this is not the internet, it's a iphone and the apple appstore, I can't build my own. Cydia does not count, that exploits a bug, that could be closed anytime.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

You're completely barking up the wrong tree here.

Apple has every right to only publish material they find suitable, and that's exactly how it should be.

The problem is that Apple has set it up so that what I can install on my hardware is determined by them. I don't get to make my own choice. Apple makes it for me.

The solution is to mandate an option for jailbreaking or sideloading on users' devices. Then Apple's opinion doesn't matter anymore. They can filter however they want, and I can install whatever I want, just as it should be.

Forcing Apple to publish things they don't want to publish is going about it all wrong.

bane• 12 years ago

It's almost like you're talking like you think you own your iDevice because you paid money for it.

bambax3• 12 years ago

Your solution would be a welcomed first step... However the "free market" counter argument is "just buy Android", and it's unclear whether Apple's hardware is "yours"; aren't you renting it from your network operator? Are you free to resell it?

Anyway I maintain that if all of publishing is controlled by private companies that are not answerable to the 1st amendment, then there is not much free speech anymore.

The argument that private companies should be free to not publish whatever they want for any reason applies just the same to hiring; and yet everyone is ok with the fact that companies are not free to refuse to hire someone for any reason: some reasons are acceptable, some are not.

I'm just advocating that there should be acceptable reasons to not publish something (it's bad) and unacceptable ones (we don't like what it says).

MBCook2• 12 years ago

Honestly, it really is right there in the guidelines. I understand many people don't agree with them (they do seem overly restrictive), but this shouldn't have been a surprise.

It doesn't make sense to me when developers make apps that are clearly against the app store guidelines and then complain that they get rejected.

smackfu2• 12 years ago

apps that are clearly against the app store guidelines

The absurdity is that all they need to do is change "Germans" to "World War 2 Enemy #1" and it passes the guideline.

MBCook2• 12 years ago

I totally agree. Given the historical context (and assuming it's reasonably in line with history) I think it should be allowed.

I understand why Apple wouldn't want to sell "Stomp the Muslim" or "Nuke France" on their store, but some of the things Apple is preventing may be good social commentary. People were talking about Papers Please yesterday, would that be allowed? There have been a few social justice indie-games over the last few years, I doubt many of them would have been allowed.

tomasien• 12 years ago

If it's going to be a policy, it should be a strict policy. This is the kind of thing where a "there's no room for interpretation" stance is probably appropriate - this is tricky, tricky territory, and even though a game simulating a real war will always have real entities as the enemy, I can respect a policy that is implemented to the letter in order to avoid the sort of really horrible games that could enter the App Store without it.

I'd prefer Apple to be entirely open and then only remove apps once flagged and reviewed, but if they're going to be the way they are, I prefer them to be consistent.

joakleaf6• 12 years ago

What is more strange, is that Wolfenstein 3D was allowed on the App Store then…

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/wolfenstein-3d-classic-plati...

joesmo2• 12 years ago

It's amazing how people accept censorship when it comes from Apple or other corporations (as evidenced by the sales and usage of iPhones and similar technology) yet complain when the government does it. What's even harder to accept is the extent of damage that a corporation like Apple does in this case. Through arbitrary censorship, they're essentially eliminating other businesses' ability to exist. They're essentially saying, "develop at your own risk." A company who has poured a ton of money and development resources into a project that falls within guidelines can no longer publish their product because of the invisible guidelines at Apple and their rigidity. One would think they would at least have an appeals process to deal with all the mistakes.

EDIT: With arbitrary approval like this, what is the incentive for a business to take such a huge risk?

joakleaf6• 12 years ago

It isn't really censorship in a strict big-controlling-bigbrother-government sense.

If a government is censoring, they block completely 100%. You will not be able to freely say what you want.

Here, you can definitely say and do what you want (within the law) -- Just not on an iPhone.

If you own a website with a forum on it, and you don't allow certain links to dubious content in the comments, that isn't really censorship either, is it?

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Censorship doesn't necessarily imply a government authority is the one doing the censoring.

joesmo2• 12 years ago

"censorship: the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts." -- https://www.google.com/search?q=censorship+definition&oq=cen...

I'd say this is definitely censorship. It's censorship chosen by those who choose to purchase an iPhone. It negatively affects those who have an iPhone and especially those developing for the iPhone. Yes, you can make an argument that one doesn't have to own or develop for the iPhone, but for the developer, that's over 40% (I believe) of the mobile phone market in the US. That's a huge customer base to ignore simply because it's risky to develop iPhone apps due to Apple's censorship.

Also, iPhone apps are generally useless outside of the app store. Sure, someone with enough technical know-how can install them, but for all intents and purposes, they have no value if they're being censored. That is very different from moderating a website. There are billions of websites and only one app store.

protomyth5• 12 years ago

Here's my big problem. Why do books, movies, and television not have to face this kind of crap? Why don't game developers get the same privileges as other media? Because its interactive? That's a load of crap. Because its immersive? Other media should be insulted by that assertion.

If you're a developer and you don't think your fellow developers should get the same protections as other media, then why? How does Apple sell "Patton" or "Midway" and not this?

Tloewald3• 12 years ago

You think books, movies, and television don't face this kind of crap? Publish a book that says the wrong things about the wrong people and you are toast (especially in countries where, for example, truth is not a defense, such as Britain and Australia). Movies will do all kinds of things (notably eliminating sex scenes, especially where women are enjoying themselves) to get more permissive ratings from the MPAA. And television is completely nutty (the writers of Hill Street Blues invented an entire lexicon of curses and epithets in order to have police have vaguely plausible dialog that could get past network censors).

protomyth5• 12 years ago

Does Apple subject each television show, movie, and book to a "contains content or features that include people from a specific race, culture, government, corporation, or other real entity as the enemies in the context of the game, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines" rule?

1ris3• 12 years ago

Several online book stores removed books for being too offensive not long ago.

http://jenniferwrightauthor.com/indie-books-being-removed-fr...

trevoragilbert• 12 years ago

This is the kind of thing that gets blown out of proportion. App reviewers are pushed to review as many as possible in a short window of time, and then make a small mistake like this. Not that big of a deal.

glhaynes• 12 years ago

UPDATE (Friday 14 March): Maybe they’re reading Pocket Tactics in Cupertino? Andrew Mulholland just wrote in to say that Apple re-reviewed the game and have reversed their decision without Hunted Cow Studios having to make any changes. Common sense prevails. Tank Battle: East Front 1942 will be on the App Store tonight at midnight.

Apple rejects Tank Battle 1942 for depicting Germans and Russians as "enemies"

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