AppQuantum publisher accused of cloning mobile games by Russian developers (updated)

On July 14, an open Telegram chat for GameBiz game developers began discussing the AppQuantum company. She was accused of cloning projects that she previously wanted to publish.

After the publication of the material, additional stories related to AppQuantum became known. About them — at the very bottom after the main text.

The story was raised by a senior producer Mail.ru Games Ventures Ilya Yeremeyev:

Ilya Yeremeyev

“Colleagues who are working or thinking of working with AppQuantum / AdQuantum, pay attention to the game Doorman Story: Hotel team. It was stripped from the game Grand Hotel Mania. Everything would be fine, but colleagues talked about the publishing house and after a while a clone appeared in the store.”

For reference: Grand Hotel Mania is a development of the Novosibirsk company DeusCraft. This is a time manager in the spirit of Diner Dash. The main conceptual difference of the novelty is that the user does not fulfill the orders of restaurant visitors, but hotel guests. Grand Hotel Mania was released in softlonch in March 2019. Its worldwide launch on Android took place in March 2020.

Grand Hotel Mania

Doorman Story: Hotel team — development of AppQuantum partners, Red Machine studio.
The game completely repeats Grand Hotel Mania. Only her story starts not in a posh hotel, but in a cheap hotel in the American outback. The release of Doorman Story on both mobile platforms took place in May 2020 simultaneously with the worldwide release of Grand Hotel Mania on iOS.

Doorman Story

In the same chat, Ilya wrote that there was nothing to show legally to AppQuantum:

“They definitely didn’t steal anything [meaning content and code. — Ed.]. The clone has everything of its own. The question is precisely in the approach.”

From his point of view , the situation chronologically looked like this:

• DeusCraft releases Grand Hotel Mania in softlonch;
• DeusCraft meets with AppQuantum, shows the game, shares a table with metrics;
• after the meeting, DeusCraft refuses to work with AppQuantum;
• AppQuantum releases a similar project a year later.

According to him, AppQuantum did not have any top-secret data on Grand Hotel Mania. The standard package of content that the publisher receives during preliminary negotiations with the developer: metrics, project presentation and the build itself. However, these things AppQuantum was enough to create a clone of the game in a year, which she liked so much, but which could not be taken for publication.

“There is nothing to show here, everything is legal, but I consider it the most shameful action. And this is not the first case. For the first time, they bowed Mighty Party from Panoramik,” Yeremeyev emphasizes in another message in the chat.

We have not yet received an official comment from DeusCraft in connection with the situation after the appeal. However, the co-founder and owner of DeusCraft Sergey Shatokhin in GameBiz confirmed the accusations, and also supplemented the story with new details:

Sergey Shatokhin

“They came [AppQuantum] to me by themselves. Twice. Their conditions are non-standard, very much not in favor of the developer. I did not cooperate with them (…). They were not interested in the game on which I wanted to cooperate with them. They wanted to get Turbo Team [that’s what Grand Hotel Mania was originally called. — Ed.]”.

He also noted that at the time of the first conversation, the game was not in the store. He also told the chat participants that he had been driving Turbo Team to exhibitions for two years, looking for a publisher. They weren’t interested in the game. As soon as the metrics were removed from the game, interest in it grew, and a year later a clone appeared.

Sergey does not see a big tragedy in the situation, as far as can be judged by the comments in the chat:

“Clones are the companion of a successful game. In this case, ethics is violated, no more.”

As part of the Head of Publishing chat in AppQuantum, Ilya Tumenko confirmed that his company has released a clone of Grand Hotel Mania:

Ilya Tumenko

“To be honest, I advised my partners to even drag the balance from the ref in order to quickly make a prototype ready for the test, but this is for the test, now we have already moved away from the ref and are moving on.”

However, he denies that there were any partnerships with DeusCraft:

“I didn’t see metrics and presentations, but I downloaded the build myself from the store, no one sent it. This project was not brought to publishing. The authors of the game and I tested and considered a partnership on another project, they themselves told us about the Turbo Team, they say, the publisher is definitely not needed there, but maybe we will “pour” traffic with you. I asked for metrics, they didn’t send me anything.”

The history of the appearance of the clone Tumenko explains as follows:

“I liked the game. So she got into the list of ideas (we often generate such lists for partners when they have a question, what would be new to file). The presentation on us, by the way, was really rummaged, only I found out about it a week ago. I still don’t know if there are any metrics there or not.”

Tumenko does not comment on the situation with Mighty Party. But it was revealed in a conversation with us by Vlad Zhilyaev, CEO and co-founder of Panoramik studio. According to him, Panoramik has never even talked to AppQuantum about publishing the project:

Vlad Zhilyaev

“They made a clone very close to Mighty Party.

There are the same monsters, skills, mechanics and interface unique to the project. We saw this clone for the first time at one of the exhibitions. Then they brought friends to the stand to laugh together. They say their creative director is not so creative.”

In other words, it is not worth putting these situations side by side. Cloning Mighty Party is an ordinary case for the industry. At the same time, Zhilyaev considers it right that Yeremeyev raised such a question:

“Probably, if there are fewer such cases, then the industry will become better.”

In parallel with the discussion of the situation in the chat, there was a vote on whether cloning other people’s games was the norm at all. 64% of respondents said that it was “OK if you don’t use insider information.” Only 16% of respondents were against cloning. 20% said that any cloning format is acceptable.

What do you think about cloning and the situation in general?

Update

After the publication of the article, new stories related to the AppQuantum company began to appear in the chat. For example, Alexander Pavlov, co-founder of Playkot, shared why his company no longer works with AdQuantum, a structure close to AppQuantum:

“We have a similar story, but from their agency AdQuantum. They have been working with us quite successfully for about a year on the purchase of advertising on Facebook for our Age of Magic, making a profit. As traffic partners, they had access to our internal statistics, saw conversions, ROI. And then AppQuantum released their clone of Age of Magic — Dragon Champoins. We cannot formally make claims. But we think that the situation is not very beautiful: to have access to data and simultaneously work on a clone of the game. Therefore, we immediately stopped cooperating with them.”

Also, one of the developers noted that earlier Red Machine bowed, and AppQuantum published their clicker about racing. What kind of project was cloned is not reported, but the clone is called Idle Race Rider.