Apple has removed from the App Store a satirical game that sheds light on the seemingly exploitative production practices of the smartphone business.

Molleindustria’s Phone Story includes four mini-games. Each one highlights an aspect of the industry's reportedly “troubling supply chain”.

The first of the four mini-games sees the player forced to work in a coltan mine in the Congo. Coltan, used in tantalum capacitors, is essential to the production of smartphones. Some activist groups have described it as “the new blood diamonds”.

A second game sees the player trying to catch workers as they leap from the windows of a manufacturing building in China, a clear reference to the spate of suicides at Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner, Foxconn.

Another deals with the environmental waste caused by smartphone production in Pakistan.

The final game sees the player selling smartphones to excitable consumers outside an electronics store that has a white pear as its logo.

Molleindustria’s manifesto is to “reappropriate video games as a popular form of mass communication" and to “investigate the persuasive potentials of the medium by subverting mainstream video gaming cliché”.

All profits from the game were to be forwarded to charities addressing corporate abuses, says the Italian developer.

Apple has removed the game for violation of four App guidelines. It says that all games offering donations must be free and donations must be made via SMS or the Safari web browser.

It also says the game is in violation of a guideline stating that games cannot depict violence or abuse towards children.

Finally, it says Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected.

We would question whether the end user finds this game as objectionable as Apple does.