Before creating the Zombie School game we did some market research and found that most iphone and ipod touch users were students. In order to cater to this marker we thought putting the zombies in a school would be interesting as it would make the game unique in its own domain. So we developed the game and posted it on App Store for review. They approved it and the game went on sale on July 12th 2009. This shows that neither us or Apple, clearly, thought that this game would be related to school violence. iPhoneworld.ca has described  the whole situation in quite an accurate way, we would like to quote them here:

http://www.iphoneworld.ca/news/2009/07/20/zombie-school-iphone-app-pulled-following-iphoneworldca-story-developers-responce/

So in retrospect, it’s quite funny what has happened.

- A few hours after our story got posted major news sites picked it up.

- 10 hours after our original story went live Apple removed Zombie School from the AppStore.

- Zombie School was in the AppStore for at least 10 days now., before being “suddenly” pulled.

- Until now Apple refuses to give comments on why they pulled the game.

While creating the game we never realized that it wold be related to School Violence. We actually were planning to give it a funny edge by creating cartoony graphics. Since we learned that some bloggers find the game offensive we understand their concerns. We fully agree that violence should be kept out of school but the game never was intended to invoke this concept.

Zombie School is not about school shooting. Many blogs and websites have just exaggerate the situation without playing the game at all. 

There was an error made by, Robin Wauters of Tech Crunch . In his article. He states that - "It (Zombie School) lets you turn your classmates or teachers into zombies, after which you can use a machine gun, bow or grenades to kill them". This statement is not true as it is clearly stated in the Game Description that - "Your local campus has been infected by the Zombie Virus!!! Every one is infected!!". This means that the local campus of the user has been infected by the Zombie Virus. It does not by any means mean that users can convert their friends into Zombies and then kill them. This, we believe, is the root of the confusion.

Its also important to add here, that many people don't think that Zombie School is offensive or relating to school shooting: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/zombie-school/. In this Wired Magazine's article, as of now, 60% or the people are "not offended; and believe that the game should remain in the App Store" and 25% don't care while only 14% feel offended. 

Recently, there was a movie trailer call "Jennifer's Body (2009)" released in which a high school girl (player by Meagan Fox) kills other high school boys and eat them. In addition to this, other movies like, Scary Movie 1 contains material  where college students kill other college students in the school's premisses. But no one has linked these titles to school violence in such a radicle way as it has been done with with Zombie School. We find it very unfair as those movies are watched by thousands of school students and are apt to effect their minds more than a simple funny looking zombie game. 

Anyhow, we would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those bloggers and people who do find that the game encourages school shooting. We never intended to make such a product.  

We are not making any appeals to Apple as we believe its totally the on the discretion of Apple to do decide of the fait of Zombie School. Because of this controversy, we will now make sure that out future games are miles away from anyone relating it to serious problems like school violence. 

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We would also like to request you that, if possible, take a survey (from possibly school students) to really find out if Zombie School reminds them of school shooting or not.