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"Unpleasant Horse" shows Apple isn't afraid to reject big developers

by Michael Grothaus Apr 10th 2011 at 11:00AM

Apple has taken a lot of flak about the seemingly arbitrary rejection of apps in the App Store. Often small developers who have had their apps rejected cry foul, stating that Apple would never reject apps from bigger publishers. Earlier this week, however, Apple showed that even big publishers aren't immune to Apple's ban hammer.

PopCap, publisher of megahits like Plants vs. Zombies, submitted an app called Unpleasant Horse. The game's objective is to jump a Pegasus-like horse from cloud to cloud. If you miss a cloud, the horse falls to the earth and is chewed up in a meat grinder. The app was promptly rejected by Apple. In response to the rejection, PopCap tweeted "WTF? Apple rejected Unpleasant Horse cuz of 'mature content?' We thought horses dying in meat grinders was wholesome family entertainment!"

But as the New York Times points out, the tweet was later removed and PopCap has stated that it will appeal the ruling and submit the app again with a higher age rating. It's unknown what rating the game was originally submitted with, but the rejection of Unpleasant Horse goes to show you that Apple's acceptance or rejection of an app, while sometimes seeming arbitrary, at least affects large and small developers alike.



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Apple has taken a lot of flak about the seemingly arbitrary rejection of apps in the App Store. Often small developers who have had...
 

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Dan

I liked it better the first time when it was called Robot Unicorn Attack.

April 10 2011 at 6:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jbauerregs1948

High 'ick' factor to my mind.

April 10 2011 at 3:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rowdehaj

Sounds kind of similar to that rainbow unicorn game Adult Swim did.

ALWAYS-....

April 10 2011 at 2:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
treelo

Well done PopCap, you even got the attention of the NYT to basically publicise your game. Knew the age rating would get it rejected so you could make a stink about it once the right fish caught the bait of a short-lived tweet.

Now we all know about it, nothing else matters because someone's gonna buy it off the back of the story anyway. Win-win, right?

April 10 2011 at 1:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gk

So they got the age wrong (I mean horses in meat grinders?, that just f*d up) and needed to resubmit, but then thought oh rejection = free publicity, let's tweet this.

And it worked, again.

April 10 2011 at 1:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Gk's comment
Gregory Pierce

Yep. Its somewhat hard to tell if they were tweeting "tongue in cheek" or if they really thought they submitted it properly the first time.

April 10 2011 at 2:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
macserv

PopCap needs a dictionary, or to stop being so dramatic. "Appealing" the rejection would mean taking the matter to a higher authority in hopes of overturning it. That's not what is going to happen here.

If the app gets in the store, it will be because PopCap fixed their improper age rating and resubmitted, not because Apple changed their content policies.

April 10 2011 at 12:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Doug

Kind of a weak ripoff of the great Williams(?) Arcade game, "Joust".

I loved that game so much I even started to develop a version for the Apple ][ (we're talking 1983, here, folks!). Made a custom "sprite"-drawing routine that not only did all the "flying" and "collision" stuff, but also had code to do that cool Joust-er "resurrection" thing, where the "reborn" character would rise up out of the platform. That alone took so much effort in 6502 assembly code that I lost interest in the project, LOL!

Now get off my lawn! ;-)

April 10 2011 at 12:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nirgal

Also, it should be affect, not effect, large and small developers.

April 10 2011 at 11:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DaveP

What a wretched premise for a game anyway. I hope Apple reject it permanently.

April 10 2011 at 11:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to DaveP's comment
crisss1205

It was probably for ages 4+ and they want it to be at least 12+

April 10 2011 at 11:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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