Apple Cans App That Slams Its Supply Chain

An app that takes a harsh look at the smartphone industry has been removed from Apple's App Store. Phone Story included four mini-games involving child labor in Africa, worker suicides in China, e-waste disposal in developing countries, and consumerism in the West. Apple says it banned the app for reasons including the depiction of child abuse and "excessively objectionable or crude content," although it appears to be the company itself that found the game's content objectionable, the Guardian notes.

The founder of game developer Molleindustria tells Gamasutra that Apple's reaction highlights another problem with the smartphone industry. "The unanimous reaction from the developers community has been, 'Wow, it's incredible Phone Story made it through Apple's review process,'" he says. "To me, this signals a full acceptance of a regime of censorship, the equivalent, for developers, of what journalists call the 'chilling effect.' " (More Foxconn stories.)