14 DAY TRIAL // It’s pretty hard to be an iOS developer these days, as your apps can be banned from the App Store for no clear reason at any point.
This is exactly what happened in the case of several developers whose apps disappeared from the store after Apple started a gambling app purge. Even if their apps have nothing to do with gambling, that is.
The best example is of a Polish magazine whose features include a GIF sharing feature. The app was pulled from the store recently, and the developer was being told that the removal was part of an effort “to reduce fraudulent activity and comply with the government requests to address illegal online gambling activity.”
As noted by the BBC, Norway has requested Apple to remove gambling apps from its own App Store, but the cleaning process takes place worldwide, with several innocent apps mistakenly caught in the crossfire.
Several developers affected
Simon B. Støvring, the developer of the app removed by accident, told the cited source that Apple shared no details on its process of flagging apps as violating on its gambling policy, suggesting that this system may be faulty.
“Apple says these apps contain gambling but they don't reveal how they have detected this,” he said. “It seems like an unfortunate but honest mistake.”
While it’s not known how many developers had their apps removed due to this error, several of them have reportedly confirmed this happened. Some of the apps have already returned to the store after staying offline for up to 15 hours.
In typical Apple fashion, the company has remained completely tight-lipped on this blunder, though some developers expressed their frustration on social media. Needless to say, the outage is unlikely to have caused major damages to app makers, though it goes without saying that a certain impact on revenues and the download caught may have been recorded.