I've experienced this directly a few times. In one case, we had an app in the store for several years and a random update that fixed a crash was blocked for violating the rule around allowing out of app purchases. It took a couple weeks to appeal and get it approved. In that process, we changed nothing functional and resubmitted with a couple bits twiddled to make the package different and that passed.
In another instance, we made three white-labelled versions of the app. Both differed from the original app only in the colors in the design palette, and the name of the publisher since these were to be published under our customers' own accounts. One passed review without comment, and the other was abandoned after several months of back-and-forth.
This.
Once you get on their bad side with an App there is no end to it. The App Store review team will keep on rejecting every single update you do for totally unrelated random reasons.
One of my apps got approved when first submitted. Everything after that was just absurd to the point we had to abandon it. The App Store review team kept on rejecting any update we would make. The last one which was supposed to be a bugfix release got through three reviews. Each one got rejected due to different reasons. Each one addressed the problem the review team asked us to 'fix'. It was clear they did not want us in the store. We had to stop it. Half a year of work vanishing just like that.
It would have been so much easier if they had told us that they did not want us in the App Store. Such a waste of time.
That is impressive. We can't get our app past review because Apple is insisting we are permitting out-of-app purchases (not true, but they are insisting on in-app purchase capability).
They could be playing with people's livelihood in cases such as this.
They could have shut down in a more orderly fashion with 2.5 more months of severance.
In the context of criminal law, this is sometimes called "selective enforcement," and refers to the criminalization of normal behavior in order to provide plausible cover for violations of the actual, secret law. It's devastatingly unjust, and unsurprisingly applied in private jurisdictions.
They didn't just say that. They pretended it was some other rule. Which means what people suspected is true -- they lie to you about the reason for your app being removed. You may have zero chance of complying with the rule they said you violated, because it wasn't really about that rule at all, it was about another secret rule or policy decision.
To me that's far more alarming than the fact that they decided to forbid a class of app that had previously been allowed.
They could arguably defend the ability to forbid any category or type of app they want with no notice; it's their store, they make the rules, they decided that kind of app was unwelcome. Although that they don't simply admit this must mean they think it would make them look bad, and/or discourage developers from developing for their platform, and/or be evidence of antitrust illegality, and/or something.
But when they instead lie about it... it makes the whole sytem into a kafkaesque maze, you never know when they are lying to you about their rules and when they are telling the truth, when there's something you could do to "fix" your app so it would be allowed, and when they have just already decided the whole category your app is in is banned; it's not because you actually accidentally violated any rules, and there's nothing you can do to fix it, but they will instead try to, well, "gaslight" you (I normally am not fond of that phrase, but it seems apt) into thinking you were in violation of a rule.
> He said he thought it was unfair, but this was something Apple set out to do, and even as Senior Director of App Store (person directly in charge of App Review), he could not stop it.
I would like to believe if I were him, I would have had the courage to quit. NOT because it is unfair to the apps banned. But because LYING about it makes the entire App Review process illegitimate and unethical and "gaslighting" developers, and I wouldn't be willing to be the person directly in charge of all App Review if it's gonna be BS like that.