Endgame: Syria Not Allowed in the App Store, Apple Says it Violates Guideline

Must be tough to be a developer these days who wants to be relevant to world events but also needs to contend with Apple’s strict guidelines… The most recent developer to cause conflict in this area is Auroch Digital, the studio behind an unreleased title called Endgame: Syria. As you might have surmised, their “news-game” deals with the ongoing Syrian civil war, and as such, those at Apple don’t feel they can give it the green light.

We don’t know much about Endgame: Syria, so it’s hard to say if we should be disappointed about not getting to experience the gameplay just yet, but this presents another instance where some are going to get up in arms about Apple’s right to shut down a developer submission. Sounds like Endgame: Syria will get renamed and resubmitted at some point, but Tomas Rawlings of Auroch Digital still isn’t showing much appreciation for Apple’s decision:

“This decision is a shame really as it makes it hard to talk about the real world. 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.”

Using the gaming medium in the way proposed by Rawlings is an interesting idea, and we’re hopeful it will get fleshed out someday, but Apple apparently lacks the nuance to see Engame: Syria be the game to start the trend.

Without having played any of the game, we can’t read too much into Apple’s decision here. Was Endgame: Syria full of propaganda, or merely informative? We might never know, but we can try to figure that out once Auroch slaps on a new title and makes the other necessary tweaks for it to gain entry into the App Store.

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Devin Wieland

 

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