Apple 4.3 Design Rejection

Recently I made a game in Unity Engine. The game is original, from source code to images down to audio. It was successfully accepted in every store from the very first submission -even Apple-. A week later I discovered a bug in the game's advanced stages and pushed for an update, along with newer artwork for the App presence screenshots. This is when my troubles began. The infamous Guideline 4.3 Design spam took over.

Sep 19, 2019
Apple Reviewer: "This app duplicates the content and function, submitted by you or another developer to the App Store..."

Me: "Hmm, I don't have any other apps on the store. I researched for a game like mine. I didn't find anything like it. Mine is quite genuine". (proof: Trailer)

Apple Reviewer: "Apps that simply duplicate content... "

Me: ( responding with over five paragraphs to the Apple Reviewer, contemplating the insanity for anyone to label my work spam, providing sufficient and succinct evidence of my work quality in both content and context, finishing with an appeal, demanding a logical explanation behind this appears-to-be technical error )

_________________________________________________________


Sep 21, 2019
I receive neither response from the Apple Reviewer nor the Apple Board Team. Realizing this is going to be a long one.

I made a new build, removed some of the beautiful artwork on the App presence and resubmitted (guessing it had something to do with it). Yet once again Apple Guideline 4.3 Design spam is injected into my status.

Apple Reviewer: "Specifically, this app appears to be available in the same territories as another identical app submitted to the App Store. It would be appropriate to restrict the available territories for individual apps to those areas in which you intend to market and sell it and ensure none of the selected territories overlaps."

Me: ( resubmits the same build with fewer territories for review )

Guideline 4.3 Design rejection did cost many Apple developers frustration, time and agony.

So what could be causing this spam error?

• Are Apple Reviewers bots? Or simply simple humans? If it's a machine then my guess it's detecting a spam code from one of Unity's libraries or Xcode ( likely the IAP is deprecated, in which case I would relay on something like, KLGenerateSpamCode )
• While I am certain I surpassed the Apple Guideline of 2.3 Accurate metadata. It could be the screenshots I recently provided are an artwork of the game ( not actual gameplay Screenshots )
• Could it be Keywords? ( I did make broad ones )
• if you do make a build in Unity for iOS you’ll receive a project labeled Unity-iPhone as in your Xcode project. Could there be a collision between the App Store binary data and the project name

Xcode : 10.2.1
Unity : 2018.4.0f1


Thanks

 

Do you have a lot of Apps? AFAIK, I think it mostly means you've been flagged as a "spammer", which can happen if you upload a lot of apps on the app store.

 

The former Apple Reviewer who flagged the app and wrecked my business really did not like my work and decided it to call it spam.

The app, however, was accepted and Ready for Sale some fourteen days later with a different Apple Reviewer.

As expected. No explanations from Apple regarding my fourteen days delay.



Hail to Apple transparency.

 

I'm facing the same problem.... while I have published the exactly same app in Google Play and it is already working easy and smooth, all this agony from Apple!

 

Have you actually tried to add some spam code to make it even more unique or it was just accepted because it was reviewed I suppose by another reviewer?

 

Precisely the latter.

 

From my experience, the reason why you get repeated 4.3 rejections is that the first reviewer who decided that you violated 4.3 guideline, has put a note on your file identifying you as a "spammer".

From now on, other reviewers will pay extremely close attention to your apps and will often mark them as spam without any good reasons.

You may also experience a situation when you are required to consolidate your apps, while your competitors will have no problem "violating 4.3". We had a terrible experience on the App Store because of this inconsistency.

What's worse, even when you try to tell Apple about violations by your competitors, you will not succeed because Apple gives no way for developers to complain about competitors. Well, in theory, you can email them, or put a note in the Review Notes section, etc. In practice, however, such requests are just ignored, as illustrated in my Medium post linked above.

So, as it stands, very few App Reviewers can spot 4.3 violations without any flags on your file. However, if you do happen to be flagged, you will experience rejections in the future, even if there are no good reasons. At the same time, your competitors may be untouchable for years.

The result is a distorted market with lots of unfair competition. Let's hope that they either change this policy or at least ensure that it applies fairly to everyone