Apple pulls cloned games from App Store

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/07/apple-pulls-cloned-games-from-app-store/

by ukdm • 14 years ago

20 23 14 years ago

venturebeat.com

jmazur• 14 years ago

"with titles like Plant vs. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds, and Temple Jump"

This doesn't surprise me.

18803• 14 years ago

Meanwhile, in Android... https://market.android.com/details?id=com.wikilibs.fan_templ...

SquareWheel2• 14 years ago

There is one paragraph, and it clearly says "Please note this is not the actual Temple Run game". There's plenty of real examples of people trying to confuse players into purchasing screenshots, this is not one.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

It has 1-5 million downloads and 50% one-star ratings. Intentional or not, it's certainly confusing people.

18803• 14 years ago

Have a look at this[1] e-mail. Would you say that it's not a scam because it clearly says "this notice is not (...) associated with a continuation of services for domain registration"?

[1] http://i.imgur.com/1fJAh.png (via reddit http://www.reddit.com/pbvtg)

theanswriz42• 14 years ago

Bet they aren't pulling the games Zynga have been ripping for sometime now.

gtaylor• 14 years ago

Definitely a good point, but they're such a cash cow that you have to figure they will mysteriously avoid this new policy.

phn• 14 years ago

Honestly, the case mentioned in the article is a direct scam in which the user is tricked into buying something thinking it is related to the original game. This is IMHO much worse than the zynga "ripoffs".

That being said, I am also not fond of resourceful studios cloning other successful games.

hack_edu• 14 years ago

One can only wonder how many Apps would have to be purged in order to live up to this promise. Now imagine how many non-game apps would be under the same campaign; their entire App industry would collapse.

cube13• 14 years ago

I think that it really only applies in the games space. The basic features of most utility apps is pretty easily defined by the problem they're attempting to solve. The basic functionality of all Twitter apps, for example, are pretty much only what the Twitter API allows. They can do more than that(historical caching, thread aggregation, etc), but the basic functionality is to read your stream and post tweets.

gurkendoktor2• 14 years ago

Except that the App industry is not a direct profit maker for Apple at all. It is an ecosystem that boosts hardware sales. What matters is not the number of apps or the cash handed out to developers, it is end-user happiness. That's what leads to such seemingly incoherent decisions.

Anecdotally, the apps with good ratings that I saw in the App Store charts have never been rip-offs.

throwaway64• 14 years ago

Define "ripoff", angry birds is a rehash of a concept that has been very popular in flash games since pre-2000.

duskwuff• 14 years ago

A while ago, I was playing with a Playbook tablet... opened up their app store, and the top free and paid apps were a pair of games both called "Fruit and Ninja". (Not Fruit Ninja.) All kinds of classy.

atomicdog2• 14 years ago

They pulled "Temple Jump" because it received too much negative press coverage. However, "Eclipsecraft" and all the other scam games by "Top Best Adult Entertainment" are still available...

bproper• 14 years ago

Policing seems like a good way to spend a little of the $100B in cash Apple has lying around. The happier their developer community, the healthier that ecosystem will be, and the more phones and tablets will be sold.

robomartin• 14 years ago

Next: Zynga! Please.

Restore balance to the force!

joejohnson• 14 years ago

>>>Temple Jump, however, was a scam intended to trick customers into thinking the app is related to Temple Run. It had a similar icon, vague description, and a single screenshot that did not show any gameplay.

Zynga does clone games (like nearly every studio does). However, their games are clearly distinct and not intended to trick customers of a competing product.

gte910h• 14 years ago

Apple isn't just removing clones: It's removing clones that use the trademark of the original app to confuse.

An important distinction.

Apple pulls cloned games from App Store

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