Report: Apple Pulls Apps That Use Confederate Flag

A number of brands and retailers, from Amazon to eBay, are trying to distance themselves from the Confederate flag as much as possible, and that now includes Apple.

According to reports, any apps or games that use the Confederate flag image in any capacity are being pulled from the App Store. And the doesn't just involve apps that are using the Confederate flag in a less-than-appropriate way. Civil War games are also subject to Apple's new ban.

If you've been following Apple for the last week, you wouldn't be surprised by the company's move. Tim Cook tweeted his thoughts on the matter a few days after the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina.

My thoughts are with the victim's families in SC.Let us honor their lives by eradicating racism & removing the symbols & words that feed it.

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) June 21, 2015

Still, it does seem a bit odd that Apple would go after games that use the Confederate flag in a purely historical context. According to reports, Apple is telling developers that the reason their apps are being pulled is "because it includes images of the Confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways."

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yet, that's not how some developers claim their apps are using the flag. Hexwar Games' Andrew Mulholland told TouchArcade that he is "in no way sympathetic to the use of the flag in an offensive way, we used it purely because historically that was the flag that was used at the time."

While Hexwar plans to resubmit its app using a different version of the Confederate flag (and hope Apple doesn't notice, or care), other developers are throwing up the white flag.

"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," said Game Labs's Maxim Zasov, in a blog post.

"Therefore we are not going to amend the game's content and Ultimate General: Gettysburg will no longer be available on AppStore. We really hope that Apple's decision will achieve the desired results. We can't change history, but we can change the future."