It has been an odd few weeks on the App Store. First, after reaching critical mass – and making a lot of money - Flappy Birds was removed from the App Store by creator Doug Nguyen. Now it seems that Apple is rejecting games with word 'flappy' in their title.

The company's strict new line over the use of 'flappy' came to light over the weekend, when Mind Juice Media's Ken Carpenter tweeted about the rejection of his new creation, Flappy Dragon, from the App Store.

Apple directed the developer to the App Store review guidelines. Specifically, the App Store custodian highlighted guideline number 22.2, which states "Apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations will be rejected."

Apple elaborated on the decision, saying that: "We found that your app, and/or its metadata, contains content that could be misleading to users, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines. We found your app name attempts to leverage a popular app."

The assumption of course is that the "popular app" is Flappy Bird, which technically no longer exists on the App Store.

Other anecdotal reports on twitter support this apparent change in Apple's policing of its guidelines, with reports of other developers attempting to use the word 'flappy' in game titles being shot down during submission process.

In the absence of further information from Apple to explain these decisions, it is hard to know what to think about this turn of events. The App Store is already inundated with Flappy Bird clones, so without knowing if some of these will be retroactively removed - or if the titles that have been refused were especially egregious - we're unsure what this will mean for future apps.

With the Flappy Bird phenomenon having broken into the mainstream media, it is certainly not a bad thing that Apple are trying to protect a less informed audience. But if this is indeed a new harder stance to be applied across the App Store, then consistency in their decisions will be vital.

Source – Techcrunch