Cases like this -- where something is approved, then not -- show the lack of competence and lack of communication in Apple's internal operations.
In this case, despite Apple's announcement about permitting emulators, even regular users immediately questioned if this one was approved in error or if Apple was going to pull it, because even regular users understood Apple's policies and other issues involved better than the one who approved it.
And something like this keeps happening. Here they made more noise than they would have wanted by approving the thing first and then pulling it. If they had rejected it from the start, there still would have been some noise, but less of a situation.
I rather disagree. The review process is done by human beings who are not all-knowledgeable. Not everyone knows the emulator was a copy of someone else’s work. From the perspective of someone who doesn’t know that, they followed the rules and approved the app. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about tech, but I know next to nothing about game emulators simply due to lack of interest. I’ve never installed one and probably never will. I wouldn’t have known it was a ripoff and if I were a reviewer, I’d probably have approved it, too.
It’s likely the reviewer didn’t know. It’s not as if the app had a dialog on the screen that read, “This is a ripoff of another emulator.” They probably saw press reports that it was a copy after the fact. Maybe they read these forums? Who knows? But as soon as it was brought to their attention, they removed it.
Sure, knock them for ambiguity sometimes, but ambiguity played no role in this app being approved, just a lack of awareness it was a ripoff. How would they know about such a niche item?