If you live in the United States, you may be aware of the hot political topic regarding marijuana. Several groups, business opportunists and state governments are looking to have the possession, usage, and the harvesting of weed legalized. A handful of states have recently legalized marijuana, primarily on the purposes of medicinal use. The legal changes also allow individuals to grow and sell- under a license- weed, thus creating new, legal and structured business opportunities and markets.
The common person can’t exactly have a hands-on experience in every industry; I mean, he/she probably could….over the course of a century. Fortunately, developers are creating various simulators that replicate the work environments of various markets and services. While the simulator genre is basically split between professional “tutorials” and comical parodies, gamers have access to farming, flight, military, government, and even surgery simulators. A fairly new sim for mobile platforms was recently developed by Manitoba Games, and has caused a stir with Apple, as it deals with the newly-legalized marijuana industry.
What was originally available through the App Store, Weed Firm has been pulled from the catalog by Apple. The game follows the life of expelled Botany student Ted Growing, as he uses his talents in order to become the largest marijuana dealer in the town. While Apple has not issued a statement regarding the de-listing of Weed Firm, the decision was more than likely due to the subject matter of the game. As Manitoba Games points out in an open letter, despite Weed Firm’s removal, several other games with “illegal activities” are still present and thriving on the App Store:
“As you might have noticed the game is no longer available on the Apple App Store. This was entirely Apple’s decision, not ours. We guess the problem was that the game was just too good and got to number one in all Categories, since there are certainly a great number of weed based apps still available, as well as games promoting other so-called ‘illegal activities’ such as shooting people, crashing cars and throwing birds at buildings.”
Before its removal from the App Store, Weed Firm was the highest ranking game in all available categories. The title was also available through Google Play, but was removed due to publisher issues, and not the game’s internal content. Manitoba also reveals that the sequel- Weed Firm 2- will release later this year, and will feature “improved graphics and gameplay, completely new locations, magic mushrooms, new characters, obviously, and much much more”.