With the U.S. presidential election rapidly approaching, it’s no surprise to see developers trying to cash in on the hype. But developer Mobvie.com appears to have went too far with Angry Elections 2012, at least according to Apple’s standards.
“It’s banned in its current form,” said Kevin Moore, the developer of Angry Elections, in a press release sent to GamesBeat. “We are disappointed that Apple has taken such a harsh stance on what we and most people that have played the game find funny, entertaining, and certainly a witty use of political satire.”
Angry Elections 2012 is a physics-based mobile game modeled closely after Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise. You can sling President Barack Obama, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, or a host of other Democrats and Republicans into the gathering of politicos, and pulling the sling back adds more power to the “ammo” you send flying across the debate stage.
In its original state, which is still available on Google Play and the Amazon App store, Angry Elections had “some of the most notable audio outtakes from the political candidates.” The reasons for the game’s rejection was due to the following Apple review guidelines:
- 14.1: Any app that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harm’s way will be rejected.
- 22.2: Apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations will be rejected.
“We just recently changed the name to ‘Mad Elections’ and removed the alleged offensive, controversial audio outtakes to address some of Apple’s rejection details and resubmitted back to Apple,” said Moore.
We’ve reached out to Apple for comment, but it hasn’t responded as of this writing.