So, here's the basic premise for "Smuggle Truck," an iOS game that was intended to launch in March: You drive an old truck (its bed filled to the brim with illegal immigrants) across the desert, trying to cross though the American border. Unfortunately, the path is paved with dangerous hills, animals, and giant boulders. Each bump has the potential to throw your hapless passengers off the truck, in turn decreasing your score once you cross the border. Yes, it's pretty messed up.
Which is probably why Apple rejected the game from its App Store, and the developer has now been forced to make some slight changes to both the game's title and content.
Once the game started circulating around the internet earlier this year, it was met with both bemusement and criticism. Civil rights groups and immigration advocates clearly weren't impressed, claiming that the game trivializes the current debate over immigration and the very real dangers that immigrants face when trying to enter the country illegally.
"Last year, 170 human beings died crossing the border," Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said in statement to AP back in February. "It's disgraceful that anyone would try to make money out of this tragedy by making light of it in a game."
Alex Schwartz of Owlchemy Labs, the developer behind "Smuggle Truck," disagreed with the negative attitude towards his game. He stated that the idea for the game had actually occurred to him after watching so many of his friends deal with the stringent, and sometimes frustrating, legality of immigrating into the United States.
"We felt like this issue was kind of a bit taboo for games and popular media ... we wanted to build something ... about this struggle that we could put into our work and our passion, which is making games," Schwartz told the AP.
Well, obviously, Apple did not agree with Mr. Schwartz's sentiment, and the game was quickly rejected from admittance to the App Store. So, what's a developer to do? You've spent a great deal of time and capital on a game that may not come out now, thanks to its controversial content. Owlchemy Labs had an idea: change the name to "Snuggle Truck" and replace the immigrants with lovable cartoon animals.
"The changes made to the game consist only of minor art changes and some swapped sound effects. Gameplay remains exactly the same," Schwartz told Joystiq. "Essentially, instead of smuggling immigrants over the border, you're now bringing animals from the wilderness into the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided plenty of food, water, shelter, and state of the art health care."
It's completely bizarre, but what's that old saying? When the going gets tough, replace all your problems with cuddly creatures? Something like that.
Mac and PC players can actually still play the original "Smuggle Truck," a game which Tim Schafer (via Twitter) claimed made him "totally offended by how fun it was to play."