Appstun Account Termination

🚨 Our developer account is facing an unjust termination by AppleWe are two young co-founders, 20 and 23 years old. We have spent the last three years building a mobile app company from the ground up. What started as a simple dream of a WWDC21 winner has turned into our job, fueled by passion and consistent effort. But now, our account we’ve spent the last 3 years building is at risk. Despite following guidelines, our Apple Developer account is facing termination, threatening everything we’ve worked so hard to build. We need your help to protect what we’ve built.If you can help us reach the appropriate people by sharing this post or tagging anyone in Apple Team who you think could help, we would be deeply grateful.Why is Our Apple Developer Account Being Terminated?
A month ago, Apple identified a problem with our app and asked us to comply with their guidelines. We responded transparently and collaborated with Apple to ensure our app doesn’t violate any guidelines. However, as the process continued, we began to face rejection for the issue that we thought we had already resolved in previous submissions. Apple didn’t find our solution good enough.It’s completely okay. The ultimate purpose of review process is to provide feedback and allow developers to address issues before releasing a new version. Right? Wrong. Apple doesn’t think the same way. Each time they rejected our solution, we come up with an another solution that’s distinctly different than the previous one.After 3 rejections, Apple told us that we are violating their terms. The exact statement they made is “App submissions from your account have repeatedly violated the App Review Guidelines in an attempt to evade the review process. After multiple resubmissions, the guideline violation(s) detailed to you in prior correspondence remain unresolved.”We did not engage any "Dishonest or Fraudulent." behavior. We were trying to solve a problem Apple identified in our app. The App Store review process should be a collaborative effort, where developers are guided to make their apps better and more compliant with Apple’s standards. It should not be a process where developers get terminated if their solutions aren’t accepted by Apple Review Team. Instead of continued guidance, we are now facing the termination of our account.Despite our best efforts to comply, the decision to terminate our account feels overly harsh, especially given that the issues come from repeated rejections rather than any intentional violation. For a company entirely focused on mobile app development, this decision is a huge blow. We believe it’s a result of a communication and misunderstanding on both parts rather than a failure to meet standards.The Impact on Our Lives
The termination of our Apple Developer account is not just the account. It’s our entire company. Our company’s entire existence revolves around this account. For the last 3 years, we solely focused on making iOS apps. Our team of four relies entirely on it for our livelihood. We are solely focused on developing iOS apps, and losing this account would significantly impact our company.This decision affects more than just our business. It impacts thousands of users who have trusted us and made lifetime purchases and rely on us for continued support. Terminating our account leads to shutting down our servers as well. It risks letting down all these users who expect ongoing service.We understand misunderstandings have happened and mistakes (whether intentionally or not) have been made, and we are fully committed to correcting them. However, we ask Apple to consider the broader consequences. This is about more than just a business. It’s about the future of a passionate team, the trust of our users, and the continuation of a dream we’ve worked tirelessly to achieve.How You Can Help
We respectfully ask the Apple Review Team to reconsider the termination of our developer account. This decision affects not just our team, but the users who rely on our apps and the future of the projects we’ve poured our hearts into. We want nothing more than to continue developing apps that bring value to people’s lives, within the ecosystem we love and respect.We ask for the chance to discuss our situation directly with a member of Apple’s management, to clear up any misunderstandings, and to demonstrate our dedication to maintaining the integrity of the App Store. We want to make this post seen by authorities of related departments in Apple.Thank you for reading.Our Developer Account ID: 83DJ94RA72
Our Developer Account Name: Appstun Digital Solutions
My email address: [email protected]

Why did we get rejected?

We have an apple watch faces application. We were offering two different solutions for watch faces within the app. The first one was a classic Apple Watch face, which users could set and use directly. This was an Apple-native feature. However, users were not completely satisfied with it because, being tied to Apple’s watch face templates, it couldn’t be fully customized. Especially the analog watch faces with hour and minute hands were almost impossible to customize.The second feature was a tab called “Custom Animation.” This was independent of Apple’s watch face system. We created a special app within the Apple Watch that users could open and leave it running. This allowed our app to take over the entire screen, creating a high-quality image similar to a watch face. Since it was an app, we had the freedom to display any image / animation we wanted, resembling a custom watch face.To use this feature, user should open the app and leave it running on their Apple Watch. There are some disadvantages to this feature such as draining the battery faster and apps close themselves after 1 hour as apple watch only allows apps to run 1 hour without touching the screen.Apple, however, stated that users might mistakenly think the “Custom Animation” feature was a normal watch face and might feel deceived when purchasing, accusing us of misleading users.We agreed on this claim and decided to implement fixes.

History of rejection messages and our fixes

We got the message above from App Store Review team on 31 July 2024.

We replied with the message above the next day, on 1 August 2024. You can see us being collaborative and solution orianted. You can also see implemented solutions above.

We got this message above 13 days later from App Store Review Team on 14 August 2024. We got rejected without any explanation or suggestion.

After we get rejected and our app got removed, we submitted a new version that contains a new fix with the message below.--LATEST NOTE--
Hello Dear Apple Review Team,Our last submission has been rejected with this message: "Your app attempts to manipulate customers into making unwanted purchases." Indicating that users might still think custom animation feature is also a fully real watch face. Because of this, we've implemented a new and significant change.When users click on the custom animation tab, the first thing they will see will be our alert informing our users that they are not real watch faces. It appears even before the user sees custom animations and it makes it impossible for a user to buy premium in the custom animations tab without seeing the alert first.We have attached a video of our new alert in action. If there is no problem anymore, we kindly ask you to approve the submission.Thanks!

You can see the latest fixes we submitted from the video above.After this submission, we got the termination message from Apple. And this was the end of our developer account. You can see the message we got from Apple below.

Thanks for reading. If you are from Apple Management Team, Please contact us.

We ask for the chance to discuss our situation directly with a member of Apple’s management, to clear up any misunderstandings, and to demonstrate our dedication to maintaining the integrity of the App Store. We want to make this website seen by authorities of related departments in Apple.Our Developer Account ID: 83DJ94RA72
Our Developer Account Name: Appstun Digital Solutions
My email address: [email protected]