Comixology CEO Dan Steinberge addressed the company’s customers today clarifying that Apple was not responsible for withholding its comic Saga #12 from the Comixology iOS app.
Steinberger went on to say that its decision to not publish Saga #12 was based on a more conservative interpretation of Apple’s guidelines.
As a partner of Apple, we have an obligation to respect its policies for apps and the books offered in apps. Based on our understanding of those policies, we believed that Saga #12 could not be made available in our app, and so we did not release it today.
In the last 24 hours there has been a lot of chatter about Apple banning Saga #12 from our Comics App on the Apple App Store due to depictions of gay sex. This is simply not true, and we’d like to clarify.
We did not interpret the content in question as involving any particular sexual orientation, and frankly that would have been a completely irrelevant consideration under any circumstance.
Given this, it should be clear that Apple did not reject Saga #12.
Comixology’s apology wraps up what became a public contention against Apple and it’s App Store policies.
Anyone want to still blame Apple for the “chilling effect?” http://t.co/tfyEQyF0jh
— John Siracusa (@siracusa) April 10, 2013
For the record, I think there is a chilling effect, but only within the context of Apple’s own store. That may or may not be bad for Apple.
