Apple rejected EndGame: Syria, a game that explores different outcomes of the Syrian civil war, according to Venture Beat.
Apple's App Store Policy, which does not allow any products that "solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity." Since the Syrian civil war is an ongoing conflict where the armed rebels are fighting against the Syrian government, and EndGame: Syria explores different outcomes of this civil war, the game has been rejected.
"This decision is a shame, really, as it makes it hard to talk about the real world," said Endgame: Syria designer Tomas Rawlings. "We had hoped that Apple would be more nuanced in how they applied this rule, but we got a bit worried when it had been in submission for around two weeks without a decision - we then figured that because of the controversy of using the gaming medium to cover an ongoing war meant passing the game had become an issue for them."
EndGame: Syria is freely available game on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Andriod. It's also available to play on PCs as it is a HTML5 game. The new exploration game is a part of GameTheNews initiative and developed by Auroch Digital, according a report by Venture Beat. The game will be resubmitted after making a few changes to it.
"Our aim is to use games as a format to bring news to a new audience and submission processes such as this do make it a lot harder for us," Rawlings said. "I get that Apple wants to make sure really offensive titles don't pass into their store, but ours is far from that. In fact the response to the game has been broadly positive with much of the mainstream media picking up on the story. We'll be making changes to the game and resubmitting it but it does mean we'll have to strip some of the meaning and context from it to pass Apple's submission process and that is not ideal."
