Apple removes clones of popular games from iTunes
The Apple company began to counteract clones of top-end applications. The games of an extremely prolific independent developer were the first to fall under the knife.
Games such as Plant vs were also removed. Zombie, Angry Ninja Birds and Temple Jump. They, as you might guess from the name, have a lot in common with Plants vs. Zombies, Angry Birds and Temple Run.
Moreover, Temple Jump has managed to achieve some success in the iTunes App Store, reaching the top of the top paid apps.
The author of all suspicious applications, which Apple started cleaning, was a certain Anton Sinelnikov (Anton Sinelnikov). According to unofficial data, before the purge, 68 iOS applications were listed for this developer.
This is the third scandal in recent days concerning unfair cloning: most recently, Zynga was accused of copying not one, but two games, and Spry Fox sued the publisher 6waves Lolapps, who allegedly stole the game mechanics of Triple Town.
Despite numerous incidents, Apple decided to take over police functions only in the case of Sinelnikov.
“We are very pleased that Apple reacted so quickly in this situation and removed Temple Jump,” said Natalia Lukyanova, co-founder of Imangi, in an interview with Gamasutra. – “This is a real scam, which was originally intended to play on the popularity of Temple Run.”
She also added that Temple Jump, unfortunately, managed to deceive the audience. The fact is that many people bought the application, believing that it is a continuation of Temple Run from Imangi.
“It upset us and also dealt a blow to our brand,” Lukyanova said. – “We are working very hard to produce high-quality polished games, we are fighting for the hearts of our fans, and we don’t want them to think that we are releasing some trash just to steal a dollar from them.”
As noted in the TechCrunch blog, both the App Store and Android are too large platforms for them to be able to carry out police control without the participation of users. That’s why, according to bloggers, Apple needs to introduce a new option to the problem detection service.
At the moment, it is only possible to report in it that there is a bug in the application or that the application is unsafe, and also, of course, you can write about some special error. Here, the column “this application is a fake of another application” would be very appropriate, according to TechCrunch. However, this alone will not be enough. It will also require the introduction of clear rules for removing the application from the market.
