As noted in Sherlock Holmes' short story Silver Blaze, dogs that don't bark can be more significant than ones that do.

And so it's been with the App Store over the Christmas season.

With most, if not all publishers - EA, Gameloft, Namco, Gamevil, Digital Chocolate, Glu etc - cutting the prices of many of their games to 99c in the week prior, swamping the charts in the process, the assumption amongst some indie developers was they would reverse their prices just before the iTunes Connect lockdown on December 23.

It won't reopen for business until December 28, meaning developers and publishers can't update apps or change their price during this period.

Dirty tricks avoided

In this way, it was assumed companies would gain excellent chart position on their titles' sale prices and lock that in place for five critical peak downloads days despite raising their prices, as it was assumed that Apple would also lock the App Store chart positions on the 23rd as it did last year.

Neither of those things appears to have happened. Publishers have kept their prices at sale levels, while the App Store charts continue to be updated at their usual frequency.

In fact, the only thing that's different for developers is that with iTunes Connect locked down, they can't get official sales figures for their games. This won't be available until the system is reopened on December 28.

What would be fascinating to know is whether this behaviour is due to general generosity of spirit or whether there has been official communications from Apple concerning its attitude to what some people have suggested would have been very sharp business practises from some of the biggest games companies on the App Store.