REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft is making it perfectly clear — no porn-like apps for its Windows Phones.
Sparked by recent criticism for a lack of quality apps from 3rd party developers that has helped push sexy T&A to the top shelf of the device’s app Marketplace, the company is moving to clean up content that’s “racy” or sexual in nature.
The tech giant issued new guidelines for app developers outlining, “a more stringent interpretation and enforcement of our existing content policy.”
Although Microsoft doesn’t allow “sexually suggestive or provocative” images or content on their apps, it is telling creators that it will now focus on paying attention to “the icons, titles, and content of these apps" and expects them to be more subtle and modest in the imagery and terms used.
So what does that mean?
“What we do permit is the kind of content you occasionally see on prime-time TV or the pages of a magazine’s swimsuit issue,” Todd Brix, Microsoft’s senior director of the Marketplace explained in his blog.
He continued, “While this change might require a little extra work on the part of a small number of developers, there are plenty of creative and appropriate ways to comply: showing male or female models in silhouette, for example, is one possible alternative.”
Developers whose sexy apps got by the earlier, more lax approval process aren’t in the clear and will be contacted and asked to clean up their act, Brix said.
All of this is in an effort to improve the customer shopping experience and eliminate any content some users may find offensive.
Another warning for developers is to not use unrelated tags for their apps that have nothing to do with the product in an effort to capitalize on popular buzz words.
Microsoft now follows Apple that has always restricted adult content on its phones, and more recently Google, that has begun enforcing its own content polices that place restrictions on adult materials and sexually-oriented apps.