It looks like Apple has become the latest corporation to jump on the free PR bandwagon by dropping Civil War games from the AppStore if they feature the Confederate flag—the one people recognize anyway. Yes, apparently some cheap goodwill from consumers is more important than historical accuracy or common sense.

According to TouchArcade, games like Ultimate General: Gettysburg and the Hunted Cow Studios Civil War series have been removed from the AppStore for displaying Confederate flags. I guess we are supposed to now pretend that the symbol did not even exist in the 1800s.

Ultimate General: Gettysburg dev Maxim Zasov said in a statement:

Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” did not try to amend his movie to look more comfortable. The historical “Gettysburg” movie (1993) is still on iTunes. We believe that all historical art forms: books, movies, or games such as ours, help to learn and understand history, depicting events as they were. True stories are more important to us than money.

Therefore we are not going to amend the game’s content and Ultimate General: Gettysburg will no longer be available on AppStore. We really hope that Apple’s decision will achieve the desired results. We can’t change history, but we can change the future.

No one is arguing what the Confederate flag stands for. It is pretty clear the flag has about as much to do with southern pride as fake testicles on a trailer hitch, and only someone who is completely ignorant of history would think that it is anything but an inflammatory symbol aimed at displaying where your opinions on race lie.

But it is one thing to have the Confederate flag removed from a government building, it is another to demand that its image be removed from all media, especially media that use the flag for historical accuracy.

So far, several retailers have removed Confederate flag merchandise from their stores, including Wal-mart Stores Inc, Amazon Inc, and others. Everything from phone covers to beer coozies have been removed from shelves, proving several companies’ dedication to token gestures.

Meanwhile, if you want a Soviet flag with a big picture of Stalin on it, Amazon still has you covered, and you can get a nice Nazi Luftwaffe officer’s cap to go with it.

Feature image credit: Game Labs
Screenshot via Amazon.com