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Welcome to the Life After Blindness Spotlight podcast. My special guest this week is Marty schultz from Kid Friendly Software. Marty develops the Blindfold Games series that we all appreciate and love!
This special edition of the podcast is to Spotlight the issues that Marty is having with Apple and a new rule they have implemented that is preventing him from adding new games at the App Store as well as updating any of his existing apps.
In this interview, Marty talks about the humble beginnings of the Blindfold Game series and it’s growth up untill now. He explains the current issues that he’s having with Apple and what we can do as a community to help him remedy the problem. He also talks about the possible future of Kid Friendly Software and what he would like to do if Apple would change this rule.
Below is a description of the problem in Marty’s own words from his blog:
Two weeks ago, Apple rejected 3 updates: Blindfold Hopper, Blindfold Craps and Blindfold Horserace, by saying it violates a new rule of the App Store: apps that vary only by content (such as video or audio or text) must be merged into one app. I explained that these apps are all different, and that only their menus and settings screens are similar. I requested a phone call to discuss this further. Tap here for details on Apple’s rejection.
On Wednesday night, I talked with an Apple representative, and Apple’s decision is that unless I merge the 80 Blindfold Games into a handful of apps, they will no longer allow new games to be released or allow updates to be made.
From a technology perspective, that’s extremely hard and time-consuming. From a business perspective, that would mean spending hundreds of hours recoding the games, with no possible return-on-investment. Most of the games generate sales in the first three months of the game being released, and I’ve been building these games for 4 years.
From a usability perspective, that means the main menus would be ridiculously complex, and the settings screens would be confusing and almost unusable.
If you are unhappy with this decision, you can express your opinion to Apple. The accessibility desk is at accessibility@apple.com or you can call 1-800-MY-APPLE. Thanks to everyone for enjoying my games.
