Apple’s Mac App Store Rejected ‘Untitled Goose Game’

‘Untitled Goose Game,’ the popular macOS game by Panic, was rejected by Apple’s Mac App Store reviewers — twice.

Panic is well-known in the Mac community for making incredibly high-quality apps, some of which have even won Apple Design Awards. Unfortunately, when the company tried to submit its ‘Untitled Goose Game,’ App Store reviewers rejected it twice, according to co-founder Cabel Sasser.

A short story. We once submitted Untitled Goose Game to the Mac App Store. It was rejected by the reviewer because they thought you couldn’t skip the credits. (?!?) We explained that you could skip the credits by holding space. It was then rejected for something else and at that point we just gave up and never bothered to resubmit. Fin

Cabel Sasser, @cabel@panic.com, March 6, 2023

Panic went on to release the game via Steam and the Epic Game Store.

Unfortunately, this example is just the latest that illustrates Apple’s overall lack of commitment to the Mac gaming market. For example, former App Store Editor Neil Long recently made the case that Apple doesn’t care about the gaming market and views game developers much as a “contemptuous landlord” would.

The woefully understaffed team of app reviewers couldn’t handle the volume of games coming through – and seemingly still can’t today. Ask any staffer at a mobile game studio and they’re guaranteed to have an app review horror story involving their game being repeatedly rejected for an arbitrary reason, or removed from sale entirely. Developers are being treated with contempt.

Given the success of Panic’s software in the market, and how much they have supported and contributed to the success of the Mac platform, Sasser would probably agree with Long’s sentiment.