Apple Removes Games From App Store for Showing the Confederate Flag -- Report

The nature of showing the Confederate flag in media has been hotly debated over the last week, and many companies have removed it. Warner Bros., for example, has canceled production on Dukes of Hazzard toy cars with the flag painted on top. Now, Apple is responding in a similar way.

According to a report from TouchArcade, Apple has removed several games from its App Store for including images of the flag. Included among these are several games depicting the history of the American Civil War, such as Ultimate General: Gettysburg and the Civil War series.

Developers are reporting that Apple is removing their games "because [they] include images of the Confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways."

Ultimate General studio Game Labs told TouchArcade that it was disappointed with Apple's decision, but it was not going to fight it. Studio head Maxim Zasov explained, "We believe that all historical art forms: books, movies, or games such as ours, help to learn and understand history, depicting events as they were. True stories are more important to us than money. Therefore we are not going to amend the game's content and Ultimate General: Gettysburg will no longer be available on AppStore. We really hope that Apple’s decision will achieve the desired results. We can’t change history, but we can change the future."

The director of the Civil War series at developer Hunted Cow wrote to Kotaku that his studio is working to replace the flag in its games: "It seems disappointing that they would remove it as they weren't being used in an offensive way, being that they were historical war games and hence it was the flag used at the time. At the moment we're reworking the games to replace the flags that are deemed offensive. We're going to use the Confederate flag from 1861 and 1862 as the one that's considered offensive wasn't introduced until late 1862."

GameSpot has reached out for comment from Apple and will update this article if we hear back. Apple has been known for pulling games from the App Store in the past; in 2014, the company removed apps that mentioned or showed the process of growing marijuana.