Apple bans Joyful Executions iOS game that satirises North Korea

Norwegian studio 8-Bit Underpants has become the latest mobile games developer to fall foul of Apple's App Store approvals rules on political grounds, with its game Joyful Executions.

The turn-based survival title is pitched as "a parody game on North Korean propaganda for children and a satire on our willingness to accept morally questionable acts through gamification", and puts players in charge of a firing squad tasked with killing protesters on the streets.

8-Bit Underpants' Fredrik Nordstrom tells Pocket Gamer that the game was rejected by Apple after a month within its approval process due to flouting paragraph 16.1 of its App Store guidelines: "Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected."

Joyful Executions has been released for Android tablets, with an Android smartphone version to follow.

"It's Apple's right to decide what they want and don't want for whatever reason they fancy. However, as a developer, I would appreciate a more consequent and traceable implementation of their guidelines," says Nordstrom.

The game may also have come up against a separate clause in Apple's guidelines, 15.3: "'Enemies' within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity," it explains. Even with satirical intent, seemingly.

The Joyful Executions website gives more background on why the game is being released, and its satirical intent regarding the North Korean regime, at a time of heightened sensitivity in the region.

"It's important that we're not scared by North Korean threats and that we don't take them seriously. Because if we do, we're cementing the legitimacy of the regime with our respect," explains the site, which also hints at an ambition to turn a spotlight onto the Western games industry.

"I didn't just want to make a funny parody of weird propaganda. I wanted to see if my game could be a little more than that. And so I tried my take on a topic that always baffled me with video games; how disturbingly easy we're manipulated by morally questionable ultra violence in video games."

Joyful Executions is far from the first game with satirical intent to be rejected by Apple. In 2011, developer Owlchemy Labs saw its Smuggle Truck game, which saw players smuggling immigrants over the US border, also blocked by Apple's approvals team.

It was reworked as Snuggle Truck with animals being delivered to a zoo, and was then approved for distribution on the App Store.

Later in 2011, Italian developer Molleindustria saw its Phone Story game barred from the store, after it tried to focus attention on supply-chain issues for mobile phones, including suicidal factory-workers jumping to their deaths – a topic that had been much in the news due to concerns about employees at Chinese firm Foxconn, one of Apple's manufacturing partners.

In January 2013, meanwhile, Apple rejected British developer Auroch Digital's Endgame: Syria, which was based on the conflict in Syria. This time, the rule in question was a clause on apps that "solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity".

"Our aim is to use games as a format to bring news to a new audience and submission processes such as this do make it a lot harder for us," said designer Tomas Rawlings at the time. "I get that Apple want to make sure really offensive titles don't pass into their store, but ours is far from that."

Apple's App Store Review Guidelines are clear in some respects about its desire for satire to be channelled into forms of content other than games, but leave room for interpretation – or confusion – in other areas.

"We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical App," explains the document.

"We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, 'I'll know it when I see it'. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it."

It's likely that Fredrik Nordstrom was well aware of the line-crossing potential of Joyful Executions before submitting it for approval, and for a developer wanting to raise awareness of a particular conflict or issue, an Apple ban can arguably be as useful as sailing through the approval process.

Even so, Apple's continued belief that games aren't as worthy a vehicle for satire as books or songs means we're likely to see more approval controversies in the future.

Meanwhile, Joyful Executions' sharp satire of the North Korean regime remains available for Android devices on Google Play, the store owned by a company whose executive chairman Eric Schmidt made a high-profile and controversial private visit to North Korea in January this year.