Apple's App Store is known for being active and full of high-quality apps, doing a good job of promoting the most popular apps. However, Apple is reportedly banning developers who manipulate rankings and there are even suggestions ratings may be skewed towards bigger developers.

"It's hard to tell who is doing this ethically and who isn't. It's hard to believe the big guys aren't manipulating the rankings and that Apple is treating everybody fairly here," a source speaking to VentureBeat said.

Marketing companies such as software bots and users in China to artificially rise the ranking of an app, regardless of quality.

Apple has banned a developer called Animoca, which pushed its app into the top 25 on the App Store. However, 70 percent of the downloads were never used.

There's also the question of whether people legitimately marketing apps will be mistakenly banned; according to VentureBeat there doesn't seem to be a way to get the apps back into the App Store after being banned, as developers who have tried have been consistently rejected.

App search company Xylogic said Apple removes around 5,000 apps a month from the Store, and the company added the amount of app downloads in the U.S. since January 2012 have fallen by 25 percent. That's because Apple is banning apps artificially rising rankings.

"We had a rejected app and we didn't know why. It would be much better if we had clear communication from Apple about what guidelines really are. It seems like everyone is worried about this, but the information isn't evenly circulated. People think that Apple plays favorites," an executive at a video game company said to the tech Web site.

"He [the executive] said there's a growing fear in the developer community that as more and more app companies use underhand marketing techniques, the greater ecosystem will be forced to do so as well as keep up with rivals.

It's a big issue, especially when Apple has such a strict app acceptance policy. If game developers are getting rejected, then why has Gameloft been allowed to effectively copy ideas from other titles and create a game based around that idea? Also, why is Apple allowing competitors such as Google - it released Google Chrome, which some view as better than Safari for iOS - into the marketplace?