Stealthbomber and Snot Rocker - sudden debut at top 10 US games ?

One possible scheme is using tons of their own iTunes account to buy this apps. Suppose I have a few thousands unique iTunes account and used them all to buy this app @0.99 at the same time it'll got up high in the chart. However that'll cost a few thousand dollars though

 

Do buying gifts count towards sales? Maybe they bought tones of gifts to get them high in the rankings.

Not sure how gifting works since I've not used it yet.

 

Nope, gifting doesn't count on sales.

 

There's a company that offers an interesting service: You register at their website, they choose an app for you, you have to buy this app, then you write a review, and once the review appears you'll get your money back. This gives you a free app. The developer pays the application and, if everything is well timed, gets exposure in the charts.

I received an ad mail from that company that offered this service to me as a developer. I guess what you see is a result of such a 'campaign', or some similar service.

I forwarded the mail to Apple but I guess they can hardly do anything about that.

 

So it's probably a different service. All I want to say is: If you're willing to pay for 5000 downloads of your app, there is a way to do that. You don't have to create thousands of fake accounts, because there are enough people out there who are happy buy your app if they get their money back, thus the transactions will happen from legit accounts.

 

You are right, if these were all legit purchases there would likely be quite a few more reviews.

They are obviously gaming the system by using a ton of iTunes accounts to buy up copies of their games. You can't pay for better advertising: give 99 cents per copy to Apple and get 70 cents back in your account. Do this several thousand times in 24 hours and you too can end up in the top 100 apps. There is nothing technically "illegal" about it. Morally and ethically bad, but not illegal.

I suspect Jirbo's testing out a service they plan to provide to others:
http://jirbo.com/inc/contact.php

Note the bolded statement (emphasis mine)...

 

Nice observation. There are a lot of "shady" areas in the AppStore and I hope someone from Apple can explain this behavior and how it happened.

 

As much as I frown on these kind of actions, I doubt they are illegal. As far as I know it's common practice in the music business. Labels buy (indirectly, via agents) tons of CDs of their artists to push them in the charts. It's part of their campaign. In the end, the charts measure the number of sales of the app, not the popularity. (Of course one would like the charts to visualize the popularity but you can effectively measure this by counting sales only, which unfortunately can be faked)

 

That's where there may still be a bit of confusion on your part. Those charts you're linking to only update once per 24 hours. If you knew which Jirbo app was going to be next, you could probably track it in 30 to 60 minute increments as it climbed (using MajicRank for example).

This whole thing is not that hard to engineer. Let's say Jirbo has 50 employees, and the dummy accounts are already set up (using iTunes gift cards for payment and fake addresses). All they need to do is have all 50 employees make one purchase every 5 minutes over the course of an eight hour work day, and BOOM! There you are with almost 5K downloads and you hardly broke a sweat. Never mind what could be done if you got a few smart people together to figure out a way to AUTOMATE the process.

Seeing as you've posted again already I'll continue:
In this non-peak season, the #1 *paid* app spot is probably capturing 10-15K downloads in 24 hours. If you take my description of how to acquire 5K downloads in 8 hours it's easy to see how this works. You also have to remember that as soon as it appears in the top 100, tons of people in addition to your own workers start buying it! So many people just browse that top chart and don't even know that anything else exists.

Although there is nothing illegal about this, it does not mean that it's OK. Apple can decide to pull your developer certificate and all your apps if they desire, and I think they would do so to anyone exploiting the app store ranking mechanisms regularly. Remember kids, don't try this at home. Ever!

 

That's funny, I was just looking at the top charts and said "What the hell is a game like Snot Rocket doing at the top?!" and here's a thread with even more people asking and giving some pretty logical answers.

And that's why I come here

I know there are services that will get you 300-500 written reviews in a day or two, but not anything that will get you pushed up the sales charts so fast. It was probably a very expensive gamble, but did it pay off? I suppose if enough people keep it in the top charts...

Still, gaming the system like that kind of defeats the purpose of having a ranking system.

 

I think you guys are underestimating what it takes to to get to the number 1 spot.... based on our own experience + some basic calculations on the rank vs grossing chart (comparing prices, rank, etc with our own stats), the number 1 spot is earning about 20-25k downloads a day. I mean really, how feasible is it to get THOSE kind of numbers?

I must say though it is very strange, especially now that this is the SECOND game by the same company in a matter of days to pop up there, and I can't really think of any other way they could manipulate the system other then buying 25,000 copies of their own game. However, that just seems so unlikely.

At first I just thought it was a glitch with Stealth Bomber...

 

Remember that if you're using your own account, 70% of the cost will be returned to your bank account by apple. So to generate 25k download, it'll only cost 0.3 * $0.99 (if your game is $0.99) * 25000 = $7425.

Thats still feasible to me. Suppose the game stays #1 for the next day, it'll might as well making another extra 25K downloads. Your $7500 lost will be covered by sales from next day.

They just need enough iTunes account to actually do that.

 

No, not underestimating at all. The amount to claim the #1 spot varies by many factors... day of the week, time of year, phase of the moon, etc. (think Christmas for example for very inflated top 100 sales numbers, or weekends for spikes).

I've seen some evidence that indicates the Ranking algorithm also takes intra-day momentum into account (or it could be incorporating the rate of change from your previous day's sales, for a similar amplification effect). If true that means my example of capturing 5,000 sales in 8 hours ranks you somewhat higher than 10,000 sales spread more evenly across 24 hours. Of course once you've spiked up into the top 25 through that manipulation, the loop feeds itself. People say "hey, look, a new top app/game I've never heard of!" and buy it, and continue to reinforce and improve your rank.

The same 50 employees I mentioned could probably buy a copy every 3 minutes and hit 8000 downloads in 8 hours. That wouldn't even factor in the general population buying it as it rose in ranks. It'd be very feasible to sleaze your way to the top spot. All it takes is money, just like real life!