Apple Still Doesn't Want Your Social Commentary

Apple is not a stranger to censoring anything that may seem "over the line" according to their App Store guidelines, which is abysmal to say the least considering their incredible power in the market. Their strict policies suggest that any social commentaries on religion, politics or society should be left to the news stations and books and left out of games altogether. We the gamers know that this is an outdated view and that games have every ability to not only be taken seriously, but to make serious remarks on our culture. Apple recently removed the political strategy game Endgame: Syria from its store and is now targeting UK developer Littleloud's title Sweatshop.

According to Littleloud, Sweatshop is, "a dark comedic story leads the player through the narrative journey of Boy, a child worker in the factory, and Boss, the factory owner, interspersing comedy with moments of poignancy, tragedy and sadness." It was developed to be factually accurate and to challenge us to consider (and hopefully reconsider) the origin of clothing which we purchase. It places players in conscience-crippling situations to ignore the human rights of workers in order to make as much profit as possible to complete levels. This is quite a step up the ethical ladder in comparison to whether or not you should save or harvest Little Girls or who you should be feeding in a zombie apocalypse, and Apple did not like that one bit.

Littleloud's head of games Simon Parkin shared the following with Pocket Gamer:

"Apple removed Sweatshop from the App Store last month stating that it was uncomfortable selling a game based around the theme of running a sweatshop."

"Apple specifically cited references in the game to clothing factory managers 'blocking fire escapes', 'increasing work hours for labour', and issues around the child labour as reasons why the game was unsuitable for sale."

It's incredibly unfortunate to be living in this mode of censorship when the aritsts are actually trying to make a good point instead of exploit marginalized groups for the sake of profits. It adds another layer of complexity when we consider that these developers rely on mobile apps to publicize their games, and removing them is only hurting their companies at the end of the day. There is outrage scattered across social media over this decision, but is that going to be enough to make Apple reconsider their policies? Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer to that question.