Pot game Weed Firm yanked from App Store by Apple, says dev

In a statement on its website, Manitoba Games, developer of Weed Firm, announced the game was yanked from the iOS App Store at the behest of Apple -- implying the game's content was the reason for its removal. The game casts the player as "Ted Growing," and promises to let the player "Learn to grow weed, plant new varieties to increase your yields, expand your customer base and interact with the characters to become the biggest weed dealer in town." The game was the top free game on the App Store as of last week, and even made the top grossing charts -- climbing to number 18 last week. Business Insider reports that the game was grossing over $83,000 a day from in-app purchases when it was yanked. In the statement, Manitoba notes that there are "certainly a great number of weed based apps still available, as well as games promoting other so-called 'illegal activities' such as shooting people, crashing cars and throwing birds at buildings." It also confirms that Apple has a problem with the game's content, saying, "The Apple version might need to be censored a bit to comply with Apple's strictest requirement since they are going to be looking very attentively at what we submit from now on." The company also notes that although the game is unavailable on Android at present, that is due to issues with the game's publisher, and that "Google never had a problem with the application itself." Gamasutra has sought comment from Apple and will update this story if this request is answered.