This is our second App Store submission for Rex, a social entertainment discovery app whose core features depend on account-based personalization, saved history, and social/group functionality.
Rex’s core features include Rex AI, which provides personalized movie and TV recommendations, along with social watchlists and Party Mode for group recommendations. These features do not function in any meaningful way without an account because they rely on user preferences, saved history, social connections, and persistent recommendation data to deliver the intended experience.
Our app is being rejected under Guideline 5.1.1(v), even though account-based functionality is central to the premise of the product. Sign-in is not being used as a gate in front of otherwise accessible content. It is required because the product itself depends on an account-based experience.
We have now received the same generic rejection message twice, with no indication that our previous responses were reviewed or considered. We submitted detailed explanations of how Rex works and why sign-in is foundational to the experience, but those points have not been acknowledged or addressed.
The responses we have received do not engage with the specific nature of our app, do not address the 5.1.1(v) exception for apps whose core functionality is account-dependent, and appear to repeat the same form language without responding to the context we provided.
This is a significant investment of time and resources, and we are trying to understand what Apple is specifically asking us to change. We are not trying to gate free content behind a login. We are trying to ship a product that, by design, requires an account for its core functionality to work.
Can someone from Apple or the developer community help clarify how Guideline 5.1.1(v) should be applied to apps where personalization, social features, saved history, and group recommendations are the core product experience?
