App Store bites Apple – weed galore

Apple’s iPhone is one of the very few platforms with centralized software distribution (aka there is one body who “censors” content). While this makes gathering stats easy, it also provides an easy target for people made mad by moral panics.

The cause of the outrage is a game about drug trafficking called Underworld – it has not even been released, but already makes journalists at a British Tabloid mad according to PocketGamer.

In a traditional handheld economy, the people are angered but are at a loss of what to target – after all, there is a huge plethora of distributors peddling the same product through a variety of outlets. Even if one distro delists the product, all that happens is that others are likely to profit more…which is why such economies are unattractive for fear mongers.

Apple, on the other hand, is an unfortunate (by choice) single target: as they alone hold the keys to the iPhone, they automatically “endorse” everything they release.

Dope games have been available for almost all handheld platforms (Dope Wars, anyone) – it looks like the iPhone will be the first one which has to go without them.

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Jorge Barrios

P.S. My personal stance on drugs: don’t do em. But: Alcohol is 50x more dangerous than cannabis…as it endangers innocents. Cannabis users say “dada dada”, and if they smoke too much they say “dada dada chrk” and perish peacefully (aka not harming bystanders). People drinking alcohol excessively, on the other hand, are proven to do grievous harm to other’s life, phones and property…

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