Apple Bans 'Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration' Game From App Store (VIDEO)

(Russell Contreras, AP/Huffington Post) -- An iPhone game developed by a Boston company that allows users to drive a truck full of immigrants through the desert while trying to prevent them from getting thrown out of the vehicle has been rejected by Apple Inc.

Owlchemy Labs, which developed the game "Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration," said Thursday that the Apple App Store turned down the game.

Developer Alex Schwartz said Owlchemy Labs couldn't give details on the rejection but said it was content-related.

The company drew fire from immigrant advocates when it announced the creation of the game in February. Schwartz said he wanted to bring attention to immigration issues.

The game can still be downloaded on PCs and Macs, and includes a "legal mode" that portrays immigrants sitting in a waiting room for 20 years.

WATCH

Comments

[SUnil MEena]

05:14 AM on 05/01/2011

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[SUnil MEena]

05:12 AM on 05/01/2011

Download iphone cracked apps games download this type of many apps on theIPAstore so guys just check it out it's amazing site

[DRaymond]

09:13 PM on 04/29/2011

well at least it doesn't look like the developers haven't lost that much money developing it.

That would have been state of the art on a Commodore 64, but pretty much nothing since then.

[PedroLeon]

05:46 PM on 04/29/2011

Censorship at its finest. A proper "parental warning" should be sufficient.

[snork]

05:24 PM on 04/29/2011

I tend to agree with y'all. They ~should~ approve just about everything—with the caveat that they have a separate "potentially-offensive" category that users can select to opt into or something.

But since they don't have something like that, they are basing the decisions on popular reaction. The fact is that it *is* hypocritical, but it's not Apple's hypocriticism, it's ours. That is: we all know that this board would have been up in a lather at the insensitiveness of Apple to the plight of suffering immigrants had they gone and approved the game.

For whatever reason, we have a short social attention span... shooting Russians & bombing German cities is farther removed from contemporary civilian tragedies such as Mexican children dying of heatstroke in a pickup truck. Just imagine a game based on surfing the Fukushima tsunami. Now imagine a game based on surfing the 1906 Ecuador tsunami. Neither is more tasteless in the abstract, but we'd all agree that the first one is more insensitive to people who are currently suffering.

P.S.1: Yes, I get that the game designers have humanitarian intentions—though like South Park the 'good' intentions are wrapped in a tough-to-swallow pill.

P.S.2: Pretty sure I just coined the word 'hypocriticism', & by doing so, I just may have proved theories regarding productive morphology—i.e. 'hypocrisy' ought to have sprung to mind first in an exemplar or similar framework, but I digress

[tomteboda]

05:52 PM on 05/01/2011

After reading several of our posts, this one clinched it: fanned!

[snork]

03:37 AM on 05/02/2011

much obliged

[Boogerwolf]

03:23 PM on 04/29/2011

Sooooo, we can watch all episodes of South Park on our I-Phone but can't play this tame version of something similar to what you would see on South Park. How rediculous. Why isn't anyone making a big deal about slinging virtual birds from a slingshot into wood and glass to destroy pigs?

[CampusProgressive]

02:37 PM on 04/29/2011

READ THE DESCRIPTION AND THEN JUDGE:

Smuggle Truck was inspired by the frustration our friends have experienced in trying to immigrate to the United States. With such a troublesome issue being largely avoided in popular media, especially video games, we felt the best way to criticize it was with an interactive satire.

In Smuggle Truck, players are driving a truck with passengers in the back, bringing them over a fictional border. This idea originated as a result of learning that the process of legal immigration was not as straightforward as we had assumed. As we lived through a painful 12 months of our friend struggling through the absurd legal minefield that surrounds U.S. immigration, we felt that we should create a game that touches on the issue. The comment was thrown around that "it's so tough to legally immigrate to the U.S., it's almost easier to smuggle yourself over the border", and thus Smuggle Truck was born. A two-day prototype eventually turned into an iPhone game, with the plan to reach as many players as possible.

[userarn888]

01:25 PM on 04/29/2011

Apple is so low class. I'd never buy their products.

[snork]

05:05 PM on 04/29/2011

Wow, thanks for sharing. You just convinced me not to either!

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

11:33 AM on 04/29/2011

It's OK to shoot Germans in WWII based games. It's OK to blow up Russians in Cold War based games. But it is not OK to drive a truckload of Mexicans across the desert?

[Rick Fallin]

11:46 AM on 04/29/2011

well said.. it's hypocrisy

[OC4Obama4Pres]

05:51 PM on 04/29/2011

In wars you always vilify the enemy. It makes it easier to kill them should it be necessary. We are not at war with Mexico.

[IllTakeTheRedEye]

11:04 AM on 05/01/2011

Mexico is at war with us

[DonVitoCorleone]

10:59 AM on 04/29/2011

Kinda weird, but certainly tamer than much of the death and gore on many computer games.

[wardropper]

10:36 AM on 04/29/2011

Humor is one thing.
Gaming is another.

But trying to make a joke out of an embarrassing political and racial issue is just tasteless.

If tasteless is what you're into, I heartily recommend a nice little game from runningwithscissors - you know the one I mean...
It's gróss and sîck, but it makes equal fun of everything, which to my mind renders it harmless and inoffensive to ådult gamers.

[perredicarlo]

10:14 AM on 04/29/2011

Add another banned app to the graveyard... http://nearlybanned.com

[YoBear]

09:57 AM on 04/29/2011

Nuts! How about a game where corporate execs drain the money from all the hard working people, and then destroy the environment and eventually the world.

[Daniel McMillan]

10:27 AM on 04/29/2011

No one wants to play real world games!
But still, F&F for that one

[jeffcarroll]

09:12 AM on 04/29/2011

Yikes.

[lilylee86]

03:12 AM on 04/29/2011

seems a little sensitive.
joy fax