Game released under new label '4th & Battery'

Apple has reportedly rejected the first app released by PopCap's new game label, 4th & Battery. The app, titled Unpleasant Horse, features a dark horse that flies through the sky. Users advance in the game by eliminating birds or blasting other horses into a meat grinder. Apple is said to have blocked the release due to mature content.

Although the developer is better known for its popular games such as Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies, the company set up 4th & Battery as an outlet for many of the "smaller games, projects and ideas that have spilled out of our designers' brains over the years," according to PopCap's director of editorial and social media, Jeff Green.

"Unpleasant Horse has been kicking around since December 2009, when PopCap hosted one of our regular internal 'GameJams.' What’s a GameJam? Think of it like a reality TV show, minus the cameras," Green wrote. "We put randomly generated groups of designers together and give them 24 hours to conceive and make brand-new playable games, which are then rated before a group of judges."

The developer posted a tongue-in-cheek tweet proclaiming that they thought "horses dying in meat grinders was wholesome family entertainment."

PopCap is reportedly appealing Apple's decision, though it remains unclear if the conflict will be resolved. [via VentureBeat]

by MacNN Staff