Apple has recently made an effort to show that the company cares about gaming, especially when it comes to the Mac. However, the company’s real-life practices show that many things still need to change if it wants to truly turn the Mac into a gaming platform. On Monday, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser revealed that the popular “Untitled Goose Game” has been rejected twice by Apple’s Mac App Store.
Apple says no to Untitled Goose Game in the Mac App Store
Untitled Goose Game is a cross-platform game released in 2019 that quickly became quite popular as it consists of the player controlling a goose to manipulate objects and complete a list of challenges. The game was highly praised by critics and won several awards, such as DICE Game of the Year.
For those who don’t know, Untitled Goose Game is distributed by Panic – which is known for creating many great macOS apps such as Transmit and Prompt. For this reason, the developers thought it reasonable to make the game available on the Mac App Store for macOS users. But things did not go as they expected.
As Sasser said in a post on Mastodon (via Bold fireball), Apple has rejected the macOS version of Untitled Goose Game twice. First, the game was rejected because the reviewer believed that the player could not skip the credits. “We explained that you could skip the credits by holding space,” the developer mentioned.
The MacOS game has been submitted for review for the second time. But again, Apple rejected the game, claiming “something else.” Sasser said the developers at that point “just gave up and never bothered to submit again.” The game was released for Mac users through Steam and the Epic Games Store.
A history of neglecting game developers
Stories of Apple neglecting game developers are nothing new. A former App Store games editor revealed in an article for The Guardian that the App Store Review team “couldn’t handle the volume of games coming through.”
According to the former employee, developers are “treated with disdain” and most of them have a “horror story involving having their games repeatedly rejected for any arbitrary reason.” The report also mentions that Apple is doing very little to encourage developers to bring great games to the App Store.
Not surprisingly, Apple has been under investigation by many regulators around the world for anti-competitive and arbitrary practices when it comes to the App Store.
I’ve already written here about how Apple needs to change its thinking if they really want to compete in the gaming segment. The App Store’s strict guidelines make developers of popular games disinterested in bringing them to Apple’s platforms. A clear example of this is when Apple required every tvOS game to be compatible with Siri Remote, which is impractical for some games.
A few weeks ago, Apple held a small event to promote games on its devices. However, this is not enough to show that it really cares about games. And it’s a shame to see such great devices like iPhones, iPads, Macs, and even Apple TVs not have great games because of Apple’s arbitrary decisions.
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