The Apple App Store and the Android Market may be official app stores for their respective platforms, but that doesn’t mean they check to make sure every app is legit. Fakes aren’t unheard of, and this week a particularly high-profile franchise has been ripped off: Pokemon.
More specifically, Pokemon Yellow has been duplicated. This isn’t particularly surprising, but the popularity of the fake version is shocking. It shot into the App Store’s top 10 list and has received nearly 2000 reviews so far. The Android versions hasn’t been as successful, but can be found if you search for “Pokemon Yellow.”
Most of those reviews are negative. Besides blatant copyright infringement, the fake app is guilty of simply failing to work. The current one and a half star rating is among abysmally low, and most negative reviews complain that the game crashes after the title screen.
This is just the latest example of a popular game or franchise being used to sell unofficial apps. Earlier this month the developers of the iPhone game Temple Run were unhappy to find a number of false versions released for Android before they’d even had a chance to announce an official release date.
What can you do to keep from being scammed? It’s all about the developer. Fakes may have an official-sounding title, but they can’t take the name of the real developer unless that developer has never registered themselves with an app store. Just be careful, because a clever scam might take a name that’s close to that of the real developer.
Source: Ars Technica
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Anyone who ever thought this was legit is an idiot. They deserve to lose the 99 cents.
Come on, why would anyone bother to look into it? It’s on the top ten list and it’s Pokemon, and you like Pokemon, so you buy it. That’s not stupid.
I don’t expect people to do a lot of research before buying a pack of gum, so I’m not surprised when people don’t do research before buying a 99 cent Pokemon app.
It’s Pokemon for 99 cents. Never going to happen. It’s Pokemon on iOS without any kind of pre-announcement. Never going to happen. Plus it had thousands of negative comments, many stating it just plain didn’t work.
An update – it looks like the Pokemon Yellow fake is pulled. There is still a version on Android (which is apparently just a picture slideshow, not a game).
anyone after the first 5-10 people who didnt look at the reviews or app size deserve that 69p loss but more so than anything else people always go on about how its only 69p or $0.99 that they cant lose just found the way they can lose