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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 l

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 13y ago
My Great-aunt didn't make it out of the camps. WW2 isn't a gray area by any honest interpretation.
- joakleaf 13y ago
  Gray area in the sense that it actually offends some people whereas most people just shake their head.
- melling 13y 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.
  - stephenhuey 13y ago
    They started out as enemies of the Allies, then they became enemies of the Axis powers when they changed their allegiance. And when they were pretending to be friends of the Polish people under Nazi rule, they intentionally failed to show up as promised to help out with the Warsaw uprising so that the Polish uprising leaders would die and not get in the way when they instituted communism in Poland (I saw the new "Warsaw Rising Museum" this past summer). Brings to mind the phrase "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" But to set clearly set the record straight, the Russians were indeed the enemy at some point no matter which side you were on.
    - brudgers 13y ago
      The Soviet Union was always a US ally during the period of the war in which the US was a combatant. With 26,000,000 or so dead, [1] it is hard argue that they put any lower value on lives in Warsaw than its own citizens.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat#.22Trampler.22_mine-clearing_battalions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat#.22Trampler.22_mine-...
    - smm2000 13y ago
      Russia definitely did not promise to help out with Warsaw uprising and actively discouraged it. Uprising was a coup by Polish leaders to liberate Warsaw before Russian army arrives to be in a better negotiating position after the end of war. Soviet Union was under no obligation to help anti-soviet elements to fight Germans - enemy of my enemy is my friend is true only up to the point.
      - stephenhuey 13y ago
        I don't know that you can back up your first sentence. I'm pretty sure the museum in Warsaw claims that they did plan to work together. Also, the museum shows part of a TV show from after the war which served as Soviet propaganda. The TV show rewrote history to say the Soviets fought alongside them. My Polish friend is in his mid-30s like me and explained how they were still showing this old TV program when he was a child in the 80s. Now he knows it was a lie.
  - mariusz79 13y ago
    Tell that to the Poles, the Finns and other nations that were invaded by the Russians. Only after Germany invaded Russia, Stalin decided that they are an enemy that should be dealt with.
  - jjgreen 13y ago
    "greatly affected" is a bit of an understatement.
yummybear 13y 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.
- platz 13y ago
  However I think books and movies are different from games. Games aren't purely informational; one inhabits them..
  - walshemj 13y ago
    As you do any good book or film.
chrisjlee84 13y 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 13y 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.
  - umanwizard 13y ago
    The U.S.S.R. was on the side of the Allies (U.S., Britain, France, et al.), not Japan and Germany.
    - bosie 13y ago
      At the end. U.S.S.R was on the side of Germany for years during WW2. [1,2] After all, they enjoyed invading Poland with Germany, massacring quite a few Polish folks. [3,4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_relations_before_1941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
- joakleaf 13y 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.
  - estebank 13y ago
PythonDeveloper 13y ago
Wow. It sounds like you're seriously suggesting we ignore the truth so that we don't offend those trying to rewrite it. So GTA on iPhone, which includes the killing or beating of the public, including grandmothers, and the proliferation of sluts, whores, hookers, and drug dealers (who happen to be disproportionately black and hispanic) is okay, but a reenactment of ACTUAL world events from 1942 is not. You know what? Flappy Bird and all the clones offends me because it presents a stereotype of birds that is unrealistic and may lead to the building of a world where pipes come down from the sky and force birds to fly in unnatural patterns that result in their almost instant death, resurrection, and death again. Candy Crush offends me because it promotes the endless consumption of various sugary treats without concern for ones health, while subliminally trapping us into a sedentary lifestyle. Get real. Offend people or get the hell out of app development. My apologies if I offended any... Screw that... I hope I offended you.
sspiff 13y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_IV [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Cleansing_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Cleansing_(video_game)
walshemj 13y ago
How is a game different to any other art form?

kanja 13y ago

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

joakleaf 13y ago
Gray area in the sense that it actually offends some people whereas most people just shake their head.
melling 13y 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.
- stephenhuey 13y ago
  They started out as enemies of the Allies, then they became enemies of the Axis powers when they changed their allegiance. And when they were pretending to be friends of the Polish people under Nazi rule, they intentionally failed to show up as promised to help out with the Warsaw uprising so that the Polish uprising leaders would die and not get in the way when they instituted communism in Poland (I saw the new "Warsaw Rising Museum" this past summer). Brings to mind the phrase "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" But to set clearly set the record straight, the Russians were indeed the enemy at some point no matter which side you were on.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    The Soviet Union was always a US ally during the period of the war in which the US was a combatant. With 26,000,000 or so dead, [1] it is hard argue that they put any lower value on lives in Warsaw than its own citizens.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat#.22Trampler.22_mine-clearing_battalions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat#.22Trampler.22_mine-...
  - smm2000 13y ago
    Russia definitely did not promise to help out with Warsaw uprising and actively discouraged it. Uprising was a coup by Polish leaders to liberate Warsaw before Russian army arrives to be in a better negotiating position after the end of war. Soviet Union was under no obligation to help anti-soviet elements to fight Germans - enemy of my enemy is my friend is true only up to the point.
    - stephenhuey 13y ago
      I don't know that you can back up your first sentence. I'm pretty sure the museum in Warsaw claims that they did plan to work together. Also, the museum shows part of a TV show from after the war which served as Soviet propaganda. The TV show rewrote history to say the Soviets fought alongside them. My Polish friend is in his mid-30s like me and explained how they were still showing this old TV program when he was a child in the 80s. Now he knows it was a lie.
- mariusz79 13y ago
  Tell that to the Poles, the Finns and other nations that were invaded by the Russians. Only after Germany invaded Russia, Stalin decided that they are an enemy that should be dealt with.
- jjgreen 13y ago
  "greatly affected" is a bit of an understatement.

yummybear 13y 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.

platz 13y ago
However I think books and movies are different from games. Games aren't purely informational; one inhabits them..
- walshemj 13y ago
  As you do any good book or film.

chrisjlee84 13y 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 13y 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.
- umanwizard 13y ago
  The U.S.S.R. was on the side of the Allies (U.S., Britain, France, et al.), not Japan and Germany.
  - bosie 13y ago
    At the end. U.S.S.R was on the side of Germany for years during WW2. [1,2] After all, they enjoyed invading Poland with Germany, massacring quite a few Polish folks. [3,4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_relations_before_1941 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
joakleaf 13y 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.
- estebank 13y ago

PythonDeveloper 13y ago

Wow. It sounds like you're seriously suggesting we ignore the truth so that we don't offend those trying to rewrite it. So GTA on iPhone, which includes the killing or beating of the public, including grandmothers, and the proliferation of sluts, whores, hookers, and drug dealers (who happen to be disproportionately black and hispanic) is okay, but a reenactment of ACTUAL world events from 1942 is not. You know what? Flappy Bird and all the clones offends me because it presents a stereotype of birds that is unrealistic and may lead to the building of a world where pipes come down from the sky and force birds to fly in unnatural patterns that result in their almost instant death, resurrection, and death again. Candy Crush offends me because it promotes the endless consumption of various sugary treats without concern for ones health, while subliminally trapping us into a sedentary lifestyle. Get real. Offend people or get the hell out of app development. My apologies if I offended any... Screw that... I hope I offended you.

sspiff 13y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis_IV [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Cleansing_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_Cleansing_(video_game)

walshemj 13y ago

How is a game different to any other art form?