Ultimate General: Gettysburg, the strategy game set in the American civil war that was removed from the App Store by Apple for its use of the Confederate flag, has been made available on the service once again without any changes being made.
Developer Game-Labs posted the update to its blog last Friday saying, “Ultimate General is back! Unchanged. After several late night phone calls with Apple yesterday and today the game has returned to the AppStore [sic] the way it was… in 1863.”
The iOS strategy game was removed from the service for one day before being reinstated by Apple. Apple had begun the process of removing content from its digital distribution services, including the App Store and iTunes, which included references or symbols of the American Confederacy of the 1860s. One of the games affected by this decision was Ultimate General: Gettysburg by developer Game-Labs, which at the time wrote, “As you may have been already informed, Apple has removed our game from AppStore because of usage of the Confederate Flag. Ultimate General: Gettysburg could be accepted back if the flag is removed from the game's content.”
Game-Labs refused to alter the content of the game on the basis of its educational and historical usage, writing, “Spielberg’s Schindler's List did not try to amend his movie to look more comfortable. The historical Gettysburg movie (1993) is still on iTunes. 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 [sic],” it continued. “We really hope that Apple’s decision will achieve the desired results”
The basis for Game-Labs’ refusal to alter the content of the game echoed sentiments from Apple itself, which said, “There may have been titles that shouldn't have been pulled because the use of the flag could be considered 'historical' or 'educational.’ Apple's intention is not to lose games from the App Store, but rather remove those titles that could offend.”
Apple continued, “We have removed apps from the App Store that use the Confederate flag in offensive or mean-spirited ways, which is in violation of our guidelines. We are not removing apps that display the Confederate flag for educational or historical uses.”
Apple’s decision to remove content with Confederate symbolism came after the shooting of nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, which prompted a nationwide plea in the United States for all public spaces to remove the Confederate flag, including the capitol building in South Carolina.
