‘A Story About Hopscotch Going Through App Store Review’: Coding App CEO Lashes Out at Apple in a Twitter Thread

Hopscotch, a coding app for kids on Apple's App Store, opened up about its recent frustrations over an update issue and persistent rejections from the company. The rejections were later found to be “a mistake” caused by a “glitch” in Apple's automated software. In a heated tweet thread, Hopscotch's CEO Samantha John vented out her frustration and anger at the tech giant. She mentioned that when her team submitted a bug fix update, the app got rejected because their “promoted in-app purchases had identical titles and descriptions which could be confusing to users”. Though all looked good to her, she changed the descriptions and resubmitted the app.

However, the app got rejected once again. John submitted an appeal to the company, noting that the rejection “made no sense”. Apple wrote back, saying that the rejection feedback was valid. John, then, tweeted a photo of the mail she received from the App Store.

John stated that they submitted a bug fix update to Hopscotch and “wanted to get it out quickly to get ahead of the school year”. But things went awry.

In subsequent tweets, she added about the rejection of the app, replying to the message, and resubmitted the app.

She also emailed a contact that she had at Apple and explained the issue.

Then she got a reply from Apple that let them "release the bug fix" but told her that the "rejection was valid".

Three days after the original release date, John said she was “still in suspense as to what we did wrong”.

Over the next two tweets, she says that she “got a call from ‘Potential Spam' in San Jose California”, which she ignored, then an email from Apple arrived.

Realising that the spam caller was someone from App Review, John called them back. However, nobody answered. So, she left a voicemail, after which a representative from Apple called her back.

The representative, while looking through her case, realised that "the automated software must have had a glitch."

Though the issue was resolved after 3-4 days, John was furious. She said though the people she's met “at Apple are lovely and have been incredibly supportive of Hopscotch”, there's “something rotten in a system that treats developers in this way”.

She went on to add that the process only “wasted my energy, gaslighted me, and sucked my time away made me furious”.

She also mentioned how the App Store system was more optimised for reviewers than for developers, and vented out her frustration about the automated system that kept rejecting her app update without any human oversight.

She later updated her thread, saying that Apple called her back to apologise for the inconvenience.

They also asked her for feedback. She tweeted four suggestions and ended her thread saying that she'd “be happy to rate my experience from 1-10 every time our app was rejected”.

Have you faced a similar ordeal on Apple's App Store? Let us know in the comments section below.