Apple rejects Unity games on the App Store

Touch Arcade has the news that the long-awaited Ravensword and a number of other games built on the Unity game engine have been rejected by Apple from the App Store. The problem appears to be a number of API calls in the engine (though not specifically the game themselves, as I understand it) that allow the games to access the iPhone's number and send it back to the developer's servers.

Apple considers these to be private APIs, and they also got games developer Storm8 in trouble earlier this week; their games were pulled from the store in response to a lawsuit alleging that they were collecting data from users without their knowledge.

Chillingo, publishers of Ravensword, contacted us about this story, and they said that while the Unity engine does allow developers to use these calls, they did not use them or collect any user information. We're also told that the problem APIs "have been removed," and Chillingo has resubmitted the game for App Store approval.

As I understand it, this is the same type of issue that came up with Google a while back. It's not the same APIs (Google was using the proximity sensor back then), but now as then, it's Apple's call whether they will allow developers to use these private and undocumented calls. Obviously some apps on the iPhone have to access the address book from time to time, but it's Apple's call whether they can use APIs like that or not. This time, it appears, they said no.

Update: Unity has also contacted us, and they say that the engine was updated to Apple's wishes as soon as they learned of the issue. They also would like to point out that while Storm8 did use the same private API calls, they don't use Unity to run their games. Storm8's update on the issue is here.

View Tags

Source: http://toucharcade.com/2009/11/12/ravensword-and-many-other-…

Categories

Gaming Apple Developer iPhone App Store SDK

Touch Arcade has the news that the long-awaited Ravensword and a number of other games built on the Unity game engine have been rejected by...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

28 Comments

Filter by:

jessdnld

I don't know why Apple refuse it,but all Apple game lover waiting for it.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Absolute-Acai-Berry-Review---Does-Absolute-Acai-Berry-Make-You-Lose-Weight?&id=3041392

November 23 2009 at 5:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

carina

You know The largest STD dating sites: ____ PositiveFinder.C om ____ is an online community of tens of thousands of people with STD. Meet new friends, partners or potential spouses, or learn about STD medical information. Join for free, really a wonderful site.

November 22 2009 at 9:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

carina

You know The largest STD dating sites: ____ PositiveFinder.Com ____ is an online community of tens of thousands of people with STD. Meet new friends, partners or potential spouses, or learn about STD medical information. Join for free, really a wonderful site.

November 22 2009 at 9:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

kellywood81

I don't think it was ever the game developer's intention to harvest.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Pro-Acai-Max-Review---Does-a-Free-Trial-Really-Work?&id=3185813

November 16 2009 at 2:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mabhatter

the real question is why APPLE needs this API for THEIR applications? If it's so important to privacy, why isn't it locked out better in the first place.. or do only "friendly" companies get to use it?

November 15 2009 at 7:21 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

AmazingRuss

Hi;

I wrote Ravensword, and I want everybody to understand that Ravensword does NOT, and never did steal info, and there is no networking in it whatsoever.

Unity does not steal personal info, either. This whole mess was caused by Storm8 exploiting some api calls to steal info, which caused Apple to reject all incoming apps that use those API calls.

Unity incorporates a library called Mono, which also used those api calls for internal stuff completely unrelated to stealing information.

Unity fixed their version of Mono to not use these calls, and Ravensword was rebuilt to use that version of Unity. It is crrently waiting through another interminable evaluation process with Apple.

The only people stealing information are Storm8. Their actions caused Unity developers a great deal of trouble anddelayed the release of many highly anticipated games.

It is my sincere hope that everyone at Storm8 dies in a fire.

Russ

November 15 2009 at 12:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to AmazingRuss's comment

macserv

Hahaha, sweet. If you are who you say you are, then thanks for sharing this information, and best wishes!

November 15 2009 at 3:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Grant Buell

See macserv, I was right and you were wrong.

November 15 2009 at 5:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brent

Unity: HBMS-certified!

November 15 2009 at 9:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

camkevbell

WTF Storm8 is swiping phone numbers??? Now what, sell them to telemarketers?

November 14 2009 at 7:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to camkevbell's comment

Noah

More than likely.

November 15 2009 at 9:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Wooster

I guess the App Store approval process can look out for the customers once in a while. It gets a lot of bad rep when they do something wrong, it's easy to call out that. Makes you wonder what Apple's caught that could've been a problem in the past.

November 14 2009 at 5:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dr.Taru

Thats completely dumb, considering that for skype to work the way it does it has to use a number of private frameworks, they even use the proximity sensor...

November 14 2009 at 5:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply