Posted By: wraggster
Apple has started to reject mobile games from the iOS app store for displaying guns in their promotional material and app store icons. So far, the regulation hasn't had an impact on actual in-game content.
First reported by Pocket Gamer, mobile developers began receiving rejections from Apple on "iTunes Connect," the portal through which the company provides feedback on app store games, in late January. The change was sudden enough that developerOrangepixel, which had released its mobile game Gunslugs II on January 16th, first learned about the new policy when it tried to release an update for the game roughly two weeks later, Orangepixel's Pascal Bestebroer told Kotaku in an email.
"[The] rejection was only about one screenshot," Bestebroer said. The image had been approved by Apple previously for the game's original release. "The update was rejected by Apple because of the 'violence' in the screenshots (side note: Gunslugs 2 uses pixel-art, tiny 12x12 main characters and 1x1 blood pixels)."
Bestebroer said that the impression he got from Apple was that the company was that the promotional material for Gunslugs II had to be appropriate for a "4+" age rating:The idea behind it, from what I understand, is that even tho the app has a 12+ rating, they do need icons and screenshots and basically the store-page to be 4+ rated. So screenshots should not show anything that is below the 12+ rating.. which is a bit hard to do for most action games.
Two of the mobile games that received rejections from Apple—Gunslugs II andRooster Teeth vs. Zombiens by Team Chaos—only feature cartoonish depictions of firearms or toy ones, like the NES "pistol" from Rooster Teeth shown above. Here's a screenshot from Gunslugs II for another point of reference:
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/02/12/a...es-images-guns