The iPad release of Papers, Please will have nudity after all — Apple rejected the original unedited version due to a "misunderstanding," said developer Lucas Pope on Twitter today.
Papers, Please puts players in the shoes of a border patrol agent for the fictional, vaguely Eastern European country of Arstotzka. The original PC release of Papers, Please — a game with a deliberately low-resolution pixelated art style — contains nudity in situations where people looking to cross into Arstotzka are put through body scanning machines (see screenshot above). Players can toggle nakedness on or off in the game's settings.
Pope launched Papers, Please on iPad today. In announcing the release date for the iPad version earlier this week, he said that he had to remove nudity from the game in order to launch it on the App Store because Apple rejected it for containing "pornographic content." Pope said at the time that he was considering appealing the ruling at a later date, but announced today that, after talking to Apple, he learned that "the initial rejection for porn was a misunderstanding on their part." According to Pope, it appears that an app reviewer at Apple saw the nudity option and "extrapolated incorrectly."
Just talked to Apple. The initial rejection for porn was a misunderstanding on their part. They suggested I resubmit with the nudity option.
— Lucas Pope (@dukope) December 12, 2014
Pope is now working on an update to the iPad version that will reintroduce the nudity toggle, and expects to release that patch next week.