Game developers are seeing increased enforcement of section 3.1 of Apple’s developer policy which states that "Apps or metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected.” Although this policy has existed for a while, it appears that there is now a stronger enforcement of it – specifically related to ads that appear in apps.
For example, Little White Bears Studios tweeted that “Apple just rejected my game for a vid ad that had Google/Amazon badges.” And it’s not just affecting apps on your phone. Recently, a developer with an app for the Pebble Watch was cited by MacRumors about receiving a similar rejection notice for mentioning Pebble in their iOS app.
There are two clear solutions which game developers can implement to ensure they comply with the guidelines and to prevent receiving a rejection notice from Apple on new submissions or updates of their game. First, if your app is available on other platforms, make sure you do not mention this in your App Store description or in your creative assets and screenshots. Second, if you are going to integrate video or other ads into your game, make sure your ad providers are actively policing all iOS ad creatives so that competing platform badges are not being shown in the ads they display inside your game. If a non-compliant ad appears during a review, you risk rejection.
Upon reviewing most of the top ad providers for games, I found objectionable ads being served on nearly all of them. We at NativeX are actively policing every ad we serve (including video creatives) so that there no ads are displayed that violate the Apple developer policy. This helps ensure that our developer’s monetization solution doesn’t negatively affect the approval process.
For more details, see previous post I wrote here.