Apples Ridiculous Censorship of the Nudity in Papers, Please

UPDATE: 14:43 ET 12/12/14 Just talked to Apple. The initial rejection for porn was a misunderstanding on their part. They suggested I resubmit with the nudity option, Papers, Please creator Lucas Pope wrote on Twitter today. Ill make an update to restore the nudity over the weekend (default to off) and it should be available next week.

The award-winning border agent simulator Papers, Please is coming to iOS, but not without a few changes. According to a tweet from creator Lucas Pope, the nudity in the game had to be removed because Apple deemed it pornographic content.

Now, you might be thinking, Sure, Apple has a blanket ban on pornographic content. Whats the problem? First off, Papers, Pleases pixelated, low-res nuditywhich is seen when you use a body-scanning X-ray machine on the citizens who wish to enter your countryis hardly pornography, neither titillating nor sensual. Second, Apple is happy to sell you movies on iTunes that have actual naked humans, so it has a double standard for games.

But the biggest issue is that removing Papers, Pleases nudity defangs the games artistic impact. Papers, Please is about the degradation to which those crossing the border into a totalitarian nation are subjected, and the bleakness of working in that situation.

To be fair, the nudity in Papers, Please can be disabled in the original game. But in that case, its a choice that can be made by the player. Do you want to let entrants maintain the dignity of keeping their underwear on, or do you want your scanners to expose them fully?

The nudity exists to drive home the point of how dehumanizing and invasive the use of nude body scanners at checkpoints iswhether at the border of the glorious fictional nation of Arstotzka, or in the security line at JFK.

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Apples Ridiculous Censorship of the Nudity in Papers, Please