Apple’s Mac App Store rejected the untitled Goose game twice

Apple has recently made efforts to show that the company cares about gaming, especially when it comes to the Mac. However, the company’s real-world practice shows that there is still a lot to change if it really wants to make the Mac 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 on Mac App Store

Untitled Goose Game is a cross-platform game released in 2019 that quickly became popular as the player controls a goose to manipulate objects and complete a list of challenges. The game was widely acclaimed by critics and won numerous awards such as DICE Game of the Year.

For those of you who don’t know, Untitled Goose Game is distributed by Panic – known for creating a number of good 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 turn out as expected.

As Sasser said in a post about Mastodon (via Daring Fireball), Apple 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 we could skip the credits if we were holding space,” the developer mentioned.

The macOS game has been submitted for review a second time. But again, Apple rejected the game, claiming “something else”. Sasser said that at the time, developers “just gave it up and never bothered to resubmit it.” The game was released for Mac users through Steam and the Epic Games Store.

A history of game developer neglect

Stories of Apple’s neglect of game developers are nothing new. The former game editor of the App Store revealed it in an article The guardian that the App Store Review team “couldn’t handle the volume of incoming games”.

According to the former employee, developers are “treated with contempt” and most have a “horror history of getting their game rejected multiple times for arbitrary reasons.” The report also mentions that Apple is doing very little to encourage developers to bring great games to the App Store.

Unsurprisingly, Apple is under investigation by many regulators around the world for anti-competitive and arbitrary practices in the App Store.

I’ve already written here about how Apple needs to change its mindset if it really wants to compete in the gaming segment. Due to the strict guidelines of the App Store, developers of popular games are not interested in porting them to Apple’s platforms. A good example of this is when Apple required all tvOS games to be compatible with the 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 you really care about the games. And it’s a shame to see that, due to Apple’s arbitrary decisions, great devices like iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even Apple TVs don’t have good games.