Earlier today, we reported that developer of Indie game Papers, Please had to remove the pixelated nudity from his game due to family-focus censorship rules that the App Store maintains.
The App Store review team had rejected his game for porn. It looks like Apple has reversed its decision yet again, as the developer has tweeted that he got a call from Apple who told him the initial rejection for porn was a misunderstanding, and asked him to resubmit the game with the nudity option.
Just talked to Apple. The initial rejection for porn was a misunderstanding on their part. They suggested I resubmit with the nudity option.
— Lucas Pope (@dukope) December 12, 2014
In August of 2013, Papers, Please launched on Steam, and managed to grab quite a bit of attention for its “dystopian document thriller.” The game itself revolves around the player-controlled sprite that works as a border control guard, and is tasked with welcoming, or blocking, incoming persons into the fictional nation of Arstotzka. In this process, the player will be forced to look at papers, IDs, and other assorted documents of those trying to enter the country. Eventually, the player will gain the ability to send the incoming individuals through a full-body scanner. In the Steam, Mac and Linux versions of the game, a nude representation of the person is displayed in pixelated fashion.
The other versions of the game actually include the ability to censor the part, letting players put underwear on the sprites. But because of the initial rejection, Papers, Please for iPad, doesn’t let the player choose, and outright removes the nudity from the game entirely, by introducing underwear on the characters right from the get-go as you can see in the video below.
Lately, Apple’s App Review team has made a lot of controversial decisions, like banning the PCalc and Drafts Today widget, removing Launcher after featuring it on the App Store and more. It also asked Trasmit to remove the “Send to” Cloud Drive option. While it has rolled back some of these decisions, many still remain, and developers are now wary of trying to push the boundaries of iOS apps, fearing Apple’s unwritten App Store review rules.
It just seemed ridiculous to reject the game for the pixelated nudity, so it is good to see Apple reaching out to the developer to clarify the misunderstanding, and also to allow the nudity option back in the game. The developer says he plans to submit the update with the restored nudity option over the weekend. The nudity option however would be turned off by default.
[via The Verge]
