Thursday, June 25, 2015

Apple Pulls Civil War Games from App Store Because of Confederate Flag

At Truth Revolt, "BREAKING: Apple Pulls All Civil War Games Over Confederate Flag Controversy."

And at Touch Arcade, "Apple Removes All American Civil War Games From the App Store Because of the Confederate Flag."

Ken Burns' "Civil War" photo civilwargames_zpsjrf0mznr.jpg
UPDATE: It's looking like Apple has pulled everything from the App Store that features a Confederate flag, regardless of context. The reasoning Apple is sending developers is "...because it includes images of the confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways." We just spoke with Andrew from HexWar Games, who have released many historical strategy games. He insists, "We're in no way sympathetic to the use of the flag in an offensive way, we used it purely because historically that was the flag that was used at the time."

HexWar Games plans on attempting to re-submit their games using the lesser-known 1861 version of the Confederate flag. But, who knows if that will even be approved. No one is sure yet if Apple is banning all mention of the Confederacy, or just the specific image of the flag which has since become such a hot button issue in the USA...
Lots more at the link.

The reason this is a huge story is because of Apple's near-monopoly on structuring the popular culture, and debates about the popular culture. I like Apple products. My family uses Apple products and we're not tech geeks by any means. It's a good company. They're just a leftist company and they tremendous market power, and hence cultural influence.

0 comments: