This is really interesting. Our app Sticky (https://getstic.ky) has been rejected based on guideline 4.7 too. We are a social media app and included HTML5 games. Apple kept claiming that "offering HTML5 games appears to be the primary purpose of your app" which is not the case (certainly not in the update we are submitting) as we have several other features with equal weight. The changes to guideline 4.7 which allow HTML5 mini-games or mini-apps and which allow emulators were made in late January of this year, shortly before the US DOJ antitrust suit, where these issues are central, was filed (March). I imagine Apple changed the guideline for a legal or PR reason related to that suit, but does not really want to follow its own updated guidelines and so is finding every excuse it possibly can to reject emulators and apps with HTML5 mini-games/mini-apps. In our case, after the appeal, we were called up by someone from Apple who started the call saying they did not consent to it being recorded (how's that for inspiring trust?), who walked-back what they had said about HTML5 (and of course they did not put that in writing in the message they sent afterwards), but then came up with a couple of brand-new reasons for keeping our update off the store: claiming that we had changed the app concept... because our app was different some 4 years ago and hundreds of updates ago when it started! And including mentioning rule 4.7 regarding emulators... which we are not and do not claim to be! So I'm glad that you made this public, because I suspected we were not the only ones who were getting bogus rejections around rule 4.7, and you have confirmed it. If our issue is not resolved by the end of the week intend to publish the entire history of communication with App Review printed-off from App Store Connect so people can have a look and see for themselves.
Literally the first and main point on Sticky website (and a homepage of their app) is:
PLAY GAMES
Loads of fun games in one app
Free to play & no ads
I bet HTML5 games also totally overshadow both the other claimed use cases in time-spent and UI-space metrics.
They just made an app for HTML games despite Apple telling openly for years that this isn’t allowed on iOS (whether this is a good or bad policy is a different question).
