Rejection and Pornography

For the last few weeks I've been trying to get Trouser Trouble on the iTunes AppStore and just recieved my third rejection. When I first got the idea for Trouser Trouble I was certain that it would be impossible to get Apple to approve it for release on Iphone, and I only focused on the android version. However once the game was done it was a lot more harmless than I had originaly imagined and after reading Apple's Review Guidelines they actually seemed fairly reasonable I didn't see anything that would really conflict with Trouser Trouble. There's nothing in the guidelines that completely forbids nudity, and the game doesn't really show anything. So I decided to port it straight off and submitted it.

After ten days I got the following feedback:
We've completed the review of your app, but cannot post this version to the App Store because it did not comply with the App Store Review Guidelines, as detailed below:

18.1: Apps containing pornographic material, defined by Webster's Dictionary as "explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings", will be rejected

I wasn't really that surprised it got rejected and I had considered censoring it from the start, but never whould I have imagined that it would be classified as pornographic. I'm not really sure who is eroticly stimulated by the lowpoly characters, whose sexual organs, that are a few pixels in size, are sometimes visible for a frame or two. And of course the definition is silly, because it's based on what's "intended", and I should just be able to say that erotic stimluation was not my intention. But it wasn't all bad as it started a lot of funny jokes about me being in the porn industry.



Anyway for my next submission I added a pixelation filter as soon as the player pulls down any underwear. After another ten days I recieved the feedback; the game was no longer pornographic. However, now it violated the following rule : 16.1: Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected. I tried to ask some questions via the resolution center and also made sure that it had the highest possible age rating. But the only response I got was a generic reply saying "We encourage you to review your app content and evaluate whether you can modify the content to bring it into compliance with the Guidelines". Crude and objectionable are pretty vague terms butI did my best to modify the content. I removed the ability to pull down underwear and resubmitted the game.

And so today I have recieved the third rejection. Same rule violation; crude or objectionable content, but this time they have specified a bit more: "Specifically, we noticed your app's main concept is to pull down people's pants.". It only took them three times to notice that... They're still encouraging me to evaluate if I can modify the content to bring it into compliance with the Guidelines though; but I'd think that's pretty hard if their issue is with the main concept.

I'm considering if I should submit another version; where you pull up people's pants instead.