As developers of an app with a free basic version and a paid premium version, we recently received a malicious review on our premium app. The review falsely accused our app of being a scam and baselessly claimed it was error-ridden. This comment is clearly malicious and designed to dissuade other users from purchasing our app. The most critical point is that we haven’t had any sales records in that region recently. In response to this review, we promptly contacted Apple Support but received only a generic, templated response stating that no action would be taken. We followed up with another complaint about the review, but it was still dismissed. Apple Support provided a link to their guidelines, and within those guidelines, we found specific clauses that Apple should act upon in cases like this. We sent another email pointing this out, but we’ve received no response since. It feels like developers are left defenseless against such malicious reviews. When we face these attacks, there’s no fair judgment, and Apple doesn’t uphold the very policies it has set to protect developers’ rights. If this continues, how can developers trust this platform to safeguard their basic interests?

Recently, the App Review team made an unreasonable demand of us, requesting that we change our app icon—which we’ve been using for three years—when submitting an update. Their reason was that our app’s icon supposedly resembles that of a popular app that was only launched one or two months ago. We were utterly shocked and surprised by this irresponsible review that blatantly infringes on intellectual property rights. We quickly responded to them with our app’s history, various clarifications, and a clear statement that if the dispute couldn’t be resolved, we would pursue legal action. However, they continued to respond with robotic replies and even escalated their discriminatory auditing, accusing our app of having additional issues. We understand that developers have already faced too many similar problems. I believe many people question the professionalism, consistency, and fairness of the App Review team. How much longer must we developers endure such unjust reviews? Their appeal channels are often ineffective, and they refuse to respond via email. Should we developers form an alliance to collectively resist these unfair policies and file a group appeal to protect our rights?