Indie iPhone game developer bashes App Store, gets his game pulled the week after

Despite having a game in the App Store, Tommy Refenes is an independent game developer that hates the online service. Hates it. In fact, he describes the online store with vocabulary that would make Ari Gold proud. He airs these words back in GDC 2010 while on the microphone, and just a week after that, his game was pulled from the App Store.

Despite having a game in the App Store, Tommy Refenes is an independent game developer that hates the online service. Hates it. In fact, he describes the online store with vocabulary that would make Ari Gold proud. He airs these words back in GDC 2010 while on the microphone, and just a week after that, his game was pulled from the App Store.

Now how did that happen? His GDC 2010 talk might shed some light on the subject:

With Apple not releasing an official statement about this whole thing, that leaves us to check possible reasons as to why they took Refenes’ game down. The game, Zits & Giggles, was pulled from sale without any explanation from Apple. Although the company sent an email with “Your App Store submission Zits & Giggles” at the subject line, the message touched nothing on why the takedown was necessary.

Juding by his GDC speech, it could be one of two things: 1) he hurt Apple’s feelings by publicly launching verbal warheads onto the App Store; or 2) it might have something to do with his little experiment.

His experiment involved raising the price of Zits & Giggles. About five months ago, he raised it up to US$ 15, and on that very day, three people bought it. He raised it even higher to US$ 50, and four people bought it. Convinced that the App Store market is full of people who can’t tell a good game from another, Refenes went on with experiment.

14 people bought Zits & Giggles for US$ 299 – the price of a freakin’ PS3. On the day that the game was removed, March 15th, someone actually bought it for US$ 400.

Refenes insists that his game did not violate any App Store rule, and with no Apple stepping in to sort this out, the real story behind the game removal is still a big blur.

[via Kotaku]