Oh my, the interesting and pretty damn good Afghanistan ’11 found itself trowned out of the Appstore.

Slitherine, the game’s publisher wrote on  their Facebook that:

We are currently in contact with Apple but meanwhile, Afghanistan ’11 has been retired from sale and here at Slitherine we are pretty disappointed and angry.

Not only because the historical rigor is a fundamental key of Slitherine and Matrix Games DNA, and we never portrayed an “enemy” for its ethnical origin. Our game is based on history and we always try and depict real historical situations.

On top of that Afghanistan’11 is probably the only wargame ever produced where killing the enemy is not the main focus of the game.

How this “target the people of a specific Nation” is beyond our comprehension.

A’ 11 is one of the few games that actually does not dance around the totem pole of enemy slaughter but instead embraces the Hearts and Minds ideal of COIN operations. The game focus instead on conquering said Hearts for the conflict to be won and the threat neutralized, it focus on rebuilding Afghanistan and helping the Afghani locals, realizing that such a complicated conflict cannot be won by conventional means.

Let’s not forget it is not the first time that this happens given that Apple had already done the same to the excellent Ultimate General: Gettysburg in 2015 for having the nerve to display confederate flags in a game ABOUT THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. The game eventually made it’s way back into the store.

Hopefully this situation will get sorted out soon.