According to VentureBeat, Apple are now rejecting apps in the App Store if they advertise the word “free” in their title. Over the past month, apps that have pricing information in their metadata have been blocked in the iTunes Connect submissions. These apps have received a rejection notice as follows:
Your app’s name, icons, screenshots, or previews to be displayed on the App Store include references to your app’s price, which is not considered a part of these metadata items.
Please remove any references to your app’s price from your app’s name, including any references to your app being free or discounted. If you would like to advertise changes to your app’s price, it would be appropriate to include this information in the app description. Changes to your app’s price can be made in the Pricing and Availability section of iTunes Connect.
An Apple spokesperson has confirmed these changes but did not offer any more information. There is a huge range of apps currently in the App Store that use “Free” in their title including the popular “Where’s my Water? Free” and “Doodle Jump FREE” but it’s unclear whether or not Apple will make apps currently on offer in the app store implement this change.
Over the past year, Apple have attempted to clean up the App Store by purging apps that they deemed “problematic and abandoned.” This led to roughly 50,000 apps being removed over the course of a month.