I am sad to report that Apple have rejected the first submission of Survivalcraft, for not complying with two app guidelines.

The first violation is really silly on my part. It’s the word “Alpha” in the version name that appears on the main menu screen. Apple will not accept any app that is pre-release, test or otherwise not fit for general use. The meaning of the word “Alpha” in Survivalcraft version is different, it means that the features are constantly being added to the game based on user feedback. Anyway, I should have read the guidelines more closely and remove it. Fail 1.

The second violation is about all the links visible on the main screen and in other places in the game. Apple will not accept any app that has direct or indirect links to any external web page that provides a way to purchase services other than provided by Apple itself. There is a link to the Blog at the bottom of the main menu, and there are links to Blog and Twitter in message of the day. Most importantly, there are links that allow you to buy a premium Dropbox account from the Dropbox login page. All of these are unacceptable. Fail 2.

In short, App Store is a lot more picky than other stores. So what happens next?

I have to fix these violations. The first one is trivial, the second one slightly less so. And resubmit.

There is a small problem though, I am currently away from my office and will not return until Thursday. I don’t have my Mac with me here, so I can’t do any iOS-specific fixes until I return. The fixes should take a couple of days.

This also means that 1.21 may have to be delayed slightly. I can’t release 1.21 before Apple accepts 1.20 into the store. If I did that, iOS players would be unable to use community content created on different platforms in 1.21.

Sorry to everyone, it’s my fail :-(

On the positive side, I have made much progress with getting 1.21 ready for release. If Apple take a long time reviewing 1.20, I will start adding more features to 1.21 to not waste time.