Right now Apple effective policy is you aren’t allowed to create content that will offend people. It is certainly easy to imagine that could change to things that will offend liberals and who knows in the feature if Tim Cook screws up and is replaced by a conservative CEO maybe it will shift to offend conservatives.
I good easily be wrong, but my impression is if I want to develop content for the iOS I have no choice but to submit it to Apple for verification. Even if there are workarounds, for all intensive purposes if you want to sell an app, you have to get Apple’s permission.
The world is slightly better for the Android world, but if Google reject your app in the Playstore, you’ve lost a huge 90%?? of the potential market for Android phones. Last I looked despite there being many more Android phones, than iPhones, for mobile developers the sales dollars is similar for both platforms.
In effect Apple and Google have a duopoly that controls the vast majority of content available for mobile devices.The US government and even more so the EU have determine that if you are monopoly or duopoly, many special rules apply to your business practices, that don’t apply to companies operating in competitive marketplace. As you point in the game market there are many other distribution options, consoles, Steam direct sales etc. so maybe the damage isn’t so severe in the case of Slitherine.
But if Apple decide to ban rap music on iTunes, or music that celebrated nationalism, or advocated killing cops. Given their immense market power, I’d argue it becomes a free speech issue. And the distance for banning music based on content isn’t that far away from banning games based on content.