A game Afghanistan '11 was redntly removed from from App Store, according to Apple official response for featuring “people from specific government or other real entity as the enemies”. Yeah, iOS apparently doesn't allow people from real world portrayed as bad. Or does this rule mean that only specific governments and other real entities are not allowed to be portrayed as enemies?

More details here:

seems like typical sjw overreaction afganistan are bad guys

>Apple

There's your problem, this isn't a new issue. They've been doing this for a few ages.

Why anyone takes that closed poison garden seriously baffles me.

Though, I will remind everyone: Apple has very clear, and very strictly enforced rules.

And we wonder why there are so many Zombie games. Zombies are the only enemy you can safely use in games these days without offending SOMEONE. So what if they used Afghan Zombies maybe?

Or just make games from now on without bad guys, and only kill good guys. In other words just always make the player the bad guy.

Or just make games where everyone loves each other...but not, you know, too much because some people get offended at those too.

they also ruined this game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Days_in_Fallujah

I don't know if they target only specific government or all people, but I have sympathy for their move. The app should have never made it into the store in the first place.

The reason is that I just imagine it could be me in that game and I would not want to have that. So just taking anyone from the real world and portray them as bad is a no go. One could maybe talk about personalities of public interest but even there is a fine line of decency which shouldn't be crossed. This is has nothing to do with social justice or unfair censorship but everything with acting decent.

What's so difficult in inventing fake names and putting the game in a similar, but nevertheless preconceived setting? Nothing really. The app makers just thought it would make them a few bucks more.

They did the same thing with American Civil War games for a while because the confederate flag = evil in their eyes.

It’s Apples platform with clearly defined rules that are regularly enforced. You might not like their rules but it’s not your storefront. Apple has no duty to “freedom of speech” and have every right to disallow content based on whatever metrics they decide. It does seem like a pretty arbitrary rule, but it’s their rule nonetheless and it’s their platform.

Censorship seems like the wrong word to use to me for a lot of reasons. They aren’t a public forum and the materials reside on private servers and infrastructure. They have a brand image to maintain as a business that is effected by what is on their platform and a duty to their shareholders to protect that image. They also aren’t preventing the game from being sold elsewhere. And it’s hard to call clearly outlined rules on a privately owned platform censorship, standards would be more accurate. That’s kind of like saying Walmart is censoring a company for not selling a product they deem to be not worth selling.

If it's nothing, why so many games in Call of Duty or Battlefield series use WW2 setting, instead of fictional one? Why Crusader Kings takes place in Europe and not in Westros (without mods at least)? Why there are five games in Civilization series and only two (counting Alpha Centauri) go into the future on alien planet?

And before you say, that it's past and history, so it doesn't count - it does. We a descendants of previous generations and if our ancestors depicted in negative or even outright derogatory way - that's not really different than displaying us in such way.

If the rules are so "clearly defined" why this game could appear in the App Store in the first place?

censorship
the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts

It's censorship, all right. If organisation that employs censorship is a private company and not government it doesn't stop to be censorship.

Thanks for the reply. Many good points. I see it differently, but you put the finger at exactly the places I would point them too.

Past and history counts but the protection of people long dead is much less important. I make a difference there.

Even if rules are clearly defined, a violation of them can still happen because controls are too slow and errors do happen.

Yes, you are right, it's censorship, but not unfair censorship. I make a difference there. Normal living persons have a right not to be depicted in a negative or derogatory way. This right is much more worth than the right of some random game makers to make more money. You call it censorship, I call it illegal depiction of living persons in a negative or derogatory way.

There is a fine line somewhere. For me it's a question of decency.

nvm

the quote I posted doesn't apply to games or the like, which makes the quote totally off topic.

Denies one generalisation while making another. Smooooooth.

So you think that an algorithm or a person is going to perfectly review each product for approval each and every time? Having rules in place doesn't mean that things won't occasionally get missed.... that's a ridiculous argument.

Also, way to truncate my response to mischaracterize what I said. My point was that there is a better way to describe what Apple is doing, not that it isn't implicitly censorship. You can argue about the semantics of it, and that's valid, but you completely miss the point of what I was saying. My point was that it is more accurate to call it what it is, which is a set standard for what they allow on their storefront.

Standards that exclude things based on various metrics could be considered a form of censorship, but the implications of using the word censorship characterize the mode and intent of said censorship as having malicious intent based on the colloquially accepted meaning of the word "censorship" as used in a modern context.

For starters WW2 veterans are not "long" dead. There were quite a few of them living around a decade ago. And I doubt you would allow to tarnish memory of your own grandparents even if they died many years ago.

And also we are not talking just about "people long dead", but also about their values and worldviews. And those values and worldviews are held by people today.

Which brings us back to the question - are all living persons have a right not to be depicted in a negative or derogatory way, or only specific ones?

Yes, modern meaning of the word "censorship" is indeed implies intentional censoring media according to one's agenda and political views and not by a standard clear set of rules, common for everyone. Which is exactly the case of Apple, who disallowes games if only specific governments and specific other real entities portrayed as enemies, but is totally fine with other governments and other real entities to be portrayed as villains (see amount of WW2 games where you kill German soldiers in App Store).