• Apple is cracking down on app ranking manipulation by developers, and the marketing firms they hire.
• Many firms will use bots, which download the apps "en masse", boosting the app ranking and pushing the app into the sought after "Top 25" or other ranking sets.
• Apple has banned some app developers, but has provided no reasoning or guidance for those bans, leading to frustration from some legitimate developers.
• In a separate but hilarious article by Business Insider, Apple employees complain that the reviewing department is understaffed and forced to review many apps that are garbage.

From the article:

For a small developer who’s just released an iOS app, a position near the top of Apple’s App Store rankings could mean the difference between a million dollars in revenue and Top Ramen for dinner. So it’s no surprise that some coders try to cheat the system — and that Apple tries to stop it.

But in the battle between Apple’s police and the cheaters who employ automated bots or cheap Chinese labor to boost their rankings, some innocent startups are finding themselves banned from the marketplace — collateral damage in a high-stakes war with real money on the line.