iOS app failing App Store review (flagged as spam)

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Godot Version

4.3

Question

I’ve recently completed development of my game, after 6 months of work and Apple are rejecting the app with the reason:

Guideline 4.3(a) - Design - Spam

We noticed your app shares a similar binary, metadata, and/or concept as apps submitted to the App Store by other developers, with only minor differences.

The game is an original design, with no obvious similarities to other games in the same genre. All game code, assets and levels were created by myself, from scratch. This has been my full-time job (with no salary) for almost half a year.

My suspicion is that because the Godot framework occupies a large percentage of the binary data, an automated check is flagging my app against other games written in Godot. I appealed the rejection but no response after a week, not even a confirmation that my appeal was received.

Next, I built a custom export template to strip out some of the unnecessary engine code (namely 3D), reducing the app size from +100MB to 80MB. I resubmitted this new build with review notes explaining that Godot was being used but again the app was rejected, for exactly the same reason.

Reaching out to the community and Godot to see if anyone can help with this issue. Has anyone successfully published to the App Store using Godot 4.3, specifically using C# for scripting?

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Hello, I have the same problem. I hope someone can help about this, in the mind time I will research more and if I find something I am gonna share asap.

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I did eventually manage to get my game (plug: Rockhopper) through the review process.

I replied to the review rejection comment explaining that the game was written in Godot so may have similar binary data to other games using the same framework (due to it accounting for a large % of the overall app size)

This was rejected again with the 4.3.0 guideline so I commented on that rejection, listing key areas which I thought made my game enjoyable & unique from other games in the same genre.

Hope this helps,
Ronny