Thanks Microsoft.<p>In my spare time in an attempt to learn something new, I built a little Hacker News Reader for the Windows Store called "Hacker 8 News", I thought it would be cool to implement the share and search charms. I ran the certification checks app and it passed fine so :<p>I submitted it to the store to be approved, was taking ages waiting on approval ( more than the 7 days advertised ), finally received a message saying :<p>Failed Certification : Your app doesn't meet requirement 5.3.<p>"5.3 Your app must not contain content or functionality that encourages, facilitates or glamorizes illegal activity"<p>The irony of it all, is that there are a couple of Hacker News Readers on the store already!<p>http://www.stionasoftware.com/Blogs/post/2012/11/05/Hacker-8-News.aspx
You should try creating a roughly equivalent app for the Mac App Store, see what type of response you get there. It would be interesting to do a compare and contrast based on your experience writing (and submitting) to each of the stores.
Turns out the failure reason is quite funny, they pointed me to a screenshot I had created of the application for advertising in the store, it is basically a point in time image of what's trending,<p>one of the articles trending was :
I amlost feel obligated to pirate Office for Mac !
<a href="http://rys.sommefeldt.com/2012/10/01/i-almost-feel-obligated-to-pirate-office-for-mac.html" rel="nofollow">http://rys.sommefeldt.com/2012/10/01/i-almost-feel-obligated...</a>
What App Store hasn't something like this occurred on? The Play Store <i>maybe</i>?<p>You signed up to play the game, so go with the flow, appeal it. Posting a relatively substance-free Ask HN topic about it isn't going to accomplish anything.
Thanks Microsoft, after fixing the image/screenshot, to remove the alleged "offensive" image/news item, "Hacker8News" is officially live in the windows store...it implements both search and share charm functions!
So now they censor apps based on the word hacker? What about the word "drugs"? "homosexual"? "terrorist"? I really don't like this Microsoft that tries so hard to become the walled garden that is Apple.