Apple Just Says Yes to iPhone Game for Smokers

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Blogs and message boards have been lighting up with the buzz about Apple’s family-friendly App Store policy, which bans soft porn and satire — but a game that glorifies smoking somehow got the green light.

Apple on Monday approved Puff Puff Pass, a $2 game whose objective is to pass a cigarette or pipe around and puff it as many times as you can within a set duration. So much for taking the high road, Apple.

The game allows you to choose between smoking a cigarette, a cigar and a pipe. Then, you select the number of people you’d like to light up with (up to five), the amount of time, and a place to smoke (outdoors or indoors). And you’re ready to get right on puffing.

“During gameplay you can listen to a phat track,” the game’s description reads in the App Store. Apple rates Puff Puff Pass 17+ for “Frequent/Intense Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References.”

Marijuana is not present in the game. However, an Urban Dictionary entry says the slang phrase “Puff puff pass” refers to a game in which “a circle passes a spliff, bong or other smokeage.”

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Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Puff Puff Pass. But given Apple’s goal to retain a wholesome shopping experience that’s appropriate for people of all ages, including children, it’s safe to guess this was a mistake on a reviewer’s part, and the game will eventually be nipped in the bud.

The App Store last year generated controversy with a number of questionable decisions. The most notable example was the approval of Baby Shaker, a game whose premise was to shake a baby to death. Apple later pulled the app amid parental outrage, admitting it was a mistake.

More recently, the company’s rejection of Mark Fiore’s Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoon for “ridiculing public figures” inspired a wave of bad press. The move raised concern among journalists (including yours truly) about the state of editorial independence for media companies distributing iPad and/or iPhone editions of their publications through the App Store.

Apple eventually approved Fiore’s cartoon app, but it did not disclose whether its rules regarding “ridiculing public figures” had changed. Then this week, Apple rejected an editorial cartoon mocking Tiger Woods.

In regard to App Store content, Apple has been blunt that it does not wish to sell porn through the App Store. At a recent iPhone event, Steve Jobs said that Google’s Android OS is a place where people can download porn, but not the App Store.

“There’s a porn store in Android,” Jobs said. “You can download porn right onto your phone. Our kids can download them. That’s a place we don’t want to go, so we’re not going to.”

Even with that said, Apple’s App Store serves the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps, because they come from ?more reputable companies,? according to Apple?s vice president of marketing, Phil Schiller. Given that rationale, perhaps Apple will pull Puff Puff Smoke but approve a game made by a more reputable company such as Marlboro.

A hat tip to Krapps for originally reporting this story.

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