ADVISOR • BOARD MEMBER • SPEAKER • AUTHOR • FOUNDER
I wrote the App Store Review Guidelines, including the guidelines around real money gaming apps. Apple approves sweepstakes and casino apps, believe it or not, and I have put more of them through review than anyone you can hire.
1\
I Wrote the Guidelines Your App Is Judged Against.
I wrote the App Store Review Guidelines, including the guidelines around real money gaming apps. Apple approves sweepstakes and casino apps, believe it or not, and I have put more of them through review than anyone you can hire.
I traveled to Las Vegas, Gibraltar and Malta, the gaming capitals of the world, and worked with many operators to get these guidelines written.
3\
Your Rejection Does Not Mean What It Says.
The rejection message is a category code, not a diagnosis. The stated reason and the real trigger are frequently different things, which is why operators burn four cycles resubmitting against the wrong problem and then conclude Apple bans the category. Apple does not ban the category. Send me the rejection. I will tell you what actually happened, usually inside a day.
5\
If You Need It Built,
I Build It Too.
Design, native iOS engineering, store assets, submission work. My development company, Untethered Devs, staffs experienced teams who have already shipped in this category. Use them, use your own people, or use mine to fill the gaps. Either way you are working with someone who knows what the finished thing has to look like when a reviewer opens it.
2\
Nobody Has Taken More Sweeps and Casino Apps Through Review.
This is the category I specialize in. I know which brands are live, which ones are stripped builds, which ones carry in-app purchase and which ones route payments off-store, which entities are submitting, and what each of them told Apple to get there. I know it because I have been on both sides of it: inside the review process, and on the outside taking operator after operator through it. There is no learning curve on your submission. I have already run it.
4\
One Bad Submission Can Cost You Every Brand You Own.
Apple's enforcement unit is the account, not the app. If you run six or eight brands under a single developer entity, a violation attributed to one submission can take the entire portfolio with it. No notice requirement, no cure period, no appeal path written into the agreement. I have watched it happen from the inside. A review before you submit costs a fraction of what a terminated account costs.
No account managers, no intake team. You are writing to me.
Why me and not an agency.
Every app compliance shop in this space is doing the same thing: reading the public guidelines and guessing at the rest. The published rules are the visible part of the system. The part that decides your outcome is the operational layer underneath, and that layer was never published, because publishing it would let people game it.
I wrote the visible part. I built the part underneath.
Then I spent years on the other side of the table, taking apps through the process I helped create, in the category everyone else treats as too risky to touch. Sweeps and social casino is not a vertical I added to a service menu. It is what I do.
I publish what nobody else in this business will.
Not just the developer agreement, though I run the only clause-by-clause public analysis of it anywhere. The guidelines and what they actually mean in practice. Every rejection reason and the real trigger behind it. Why developers get terminated and what App Review and Fraud are each looking at when it happens.
That is the same knowledge you would be hiring, published under my name, months of it.
The archive is free to read. Paid subscribers get the deeper enforcement work. Either way you can judge me before you pay me a dollar.
What working with me looks like.
Readiness Review
I audit the submission before Apple ever sees it. Metadata and description language, screenshots, onboarding, age rating, geo configuration, how your alternate method of entry is presented, where the official rules sit, purchase architecture, and which entity is submitting. You get a written findings document with every issue ranked: triggers rejection, triggers escalation, triggers nothing.
Positioning and Design
Your store listing is an argument you are making to Apple about what your product is. Two operators running an identical gold coin and sweeps coin model can make opposite representations and both stay live, because the argument is what gets judged, not the mechanics. I build that argument with you.
Submission and Review Support
Rejections are opening positions, not verdicts. I write the Resolution Center response, run the exchange, escalate when escalation is warranted, and take it to the App Review Board when it is not moving. I know which arguments work and which ones waste a cycle, because I know who is reading them.
Ongoing Coverage
Guideline revisions, agreement changes, resubmission risk, and account hygiene across your whole brand portfolio. My retained clients hear about changes before they land, not after.
Who I work with.
If any of this is you, write to me.
-
You run a sweeps or social casino brand with a web product and no app.
-
You submitted, got rejected, and could not decode why.
-
You are on Google Play and assumed iOS was closed to you. It is the other way around. Apple is the achievable store. Play is the hard one.
-
You run multiple brands under one developer account and nobody has ever assessed that concentration risk.
-
You are about to hire an agency that has never shipped in a regulated category and is going to learn on your submission.
Straight Answers.
"Is this even allowed?"
Yes. Guideline 5.3.4 attaches to real money gaming: licensing, geo-restriction, free distribution. A no-consideration sweepstakes with a genuine alternate method of entry is a different legal object and Apple treats it that way. Sweeps brands hold live listings in the Casino category today, several with in-app purchase enabled. The question was never whether Apple permits it.
"Can you guarantee approval?"
No, and walk away from anyone who does. Apple reserves final discretion in the agreement itself. What I can tell you is that I know every failure mode that is visible before submission, I remove them, and I argue the ones that surface after.
"What about Google Play?"
Play is the harder store for this category and I will tell you when a Play listing is not realistic rather than take your money to find out. Several major brands ship a progressive web app there for exactly that reason. iOS is the winnable fight.
"We have our own developers."
Keep them. Most of this is positioning and compliance, not code. I will brief your team directly.
"This is sensitive."
NDA before the first call if you want one. I never name a client without written permission.
"I'm already working on an app."
Send me your brand and your current status. You will get a candid read from me personally: what Apple does with your app as it exists today, what has to change, and whether you need me at all. Some of you will not, and I will say so.
Independent consulting. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of Apple Inc. Not legal advice. Sweepstakes promotions are regulated at the state level and you should retain qualified counsel for the legal structure of your promotion. Apple retains sole discretion over review outcomes and no result is guaranteed.
