Apple recently came under fire for approving a game that simulates shaking babies in order to stop them from crying. The game caused an outrage by various organizations for the tasteless approval of such a game for the iTunes App store.

The iTunes store houses a plethora of applications all ready to be gobbled up for purchase. In order for applications and games to make it to the App Store, Apple must approve each and every program that gets loaded on there. That is exactly why there is controversy over Apple’s decision to approve the baby shaking game in the first place.

The game is titled Baby Shaker and the main objective of the game is to see how fast you can quiet the baby from crying by shaking the iPhone as fast as possible. When a red “X” appears over each eye of the baby you have successfully beaten the game. The game was selling for 99 cents on the iTunes App Store.

The game does seem a bit morbid, and organizations such the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome have chastised Apple for approving such an application for the store. According to Times Online, Apple promptly pulled the game after the public outcry over the controversial game.

Apple’s approval process came under scrutiny by the public in the past due to its inconsistent practices. Applications where users can throw shoes at George W. Bush and South Park video clips have all been rejected, while other controversial apps have been approved.

It sounds like Apple may be facing a resource issue where they do not have enough people to thoroughly look into every single application on the store. With an explosion of over 35,000 applications on the store, Apple may start running into the same kind of problems YouTube faced before with moderating.

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Entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 2:54 am under Apple, Software.

Read more entries by Mike Ferro.
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