What do you want Apple to do to stop scams on the App Store?

I think Apple could start by following through on their own published guidelines for submissions - quoted as follows :-

"If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal user data, copy another developer's work, or manipulate ratings) your apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the Developer Program."

Clearly this in not happening.

 

Hire competent reviewers, and default-sort from high to low review score. The junk will simply never show up for most users, this behavior will not be profitable anymore, and soon it will cease to exist.

 

This is just a tiny drop I the bucket. Since there are usually massive amounts of stuff being submitted daily, hiring a bunch of people to go through them all thoroughly, would be pretty damn expensive. Not to mention a very sizeable amount of them come from countries where copyrighting stuff is non existent.

 

Apple doesn't care as long as they are making money.

 

Nah, nonsense.

Apple is under no obligation to check the apps for copyright infringements. How should they even know? The review process would take weeks or even months if Apple had to verify the legitimacy of every app. As a publisher, Apple only checks if the apps are ok within the Apple guidelines. Nothing more, nothing less. It's the responsibility of the developers to protect their brands and products.
If a dev gives Apple a notice about copyright infringement, Apple will take action - but they do not by themselves. It's simply impossible for them to know every app, every brand, every soundtrack or asset and its rightful owner as well as it is impossible for them to know of each licence that's around. Moreover, it is simply not their job because the app is not their property. Except if it is. I'd love to see one of you try to put a clone of Garage Band on the Appstore - good luck with that. Or have you ever seen a blatent copy of an app that's actually Apple's property? Feel free to prove me wrong.

So, if you guys see an app that's obviously scam, give Apple a notice. If you notice a copyright infringement, contact the developer of the original app so that he can send Apple a complaint.

Blaming Apple without the knowledge how the system works is pretty useless, people.

 

you never going to stop rogue or scam games. You should give users more credit then you are doing, we are not daft as a piece of wood and can spot a fake game and if we do end up buying a fake, there is APPLE refund policy, enough people ask for a refund and they will end up looking at why that title been having so many refunds.

 

Maybe they did and found many more than that.

 

1 Guy spent 5 minutes to assess the entries for that day, picked out 16 clear scams, out of approximately 750 games. So, that's 2 % of the games published that day Without even looking properly.

Most of it is pretty obvious. Hiring 2 employees who each have 8 productive hours then gives roughly 1 minute per game to be assessed. This should suffice to eliminate a reasonable fraction of scams. Not being able to detect 100% is no excuse not to detect the 50-75% easy pickings.

Apple would benefit if less junk on the App Store would result in more sales (due to customer confidence). I know many people who buy Nintendo stuff unseen solely based on their track record of quality. I'd say a sales increase of a fraction of a % would handily pay for those two employees and then some.

Obviously, a few more people would be required for apps in genres other than games, yet the business case would be similar as for games.

Then again, Tim Cook runs a multi million dollar business while I am a grunt in a supporting department in a mid-sized company. So perhaps I'm wrong #

 

Yeah, i found a lot of scam, copies and other games while surfing in the store and wrote an email to some of the devs. Some of them wrote me back and said thank you, because I've made them realize that there was someone using their art, gameplay or whatever.

These guys are some of my favorites and they're very productive!

 

And there are at least 5-6 more copies of Reigns, gameplay wise or using the app icon!
Just type in Reigns, scroll down and you will see what I'm talking about.

Next one:

 

Alto's Adventure!

 

Super Mario Run!

This guy has even 3 other versions of the same game with different names & characters, so that more people can fall for his trick.

 

Wrestle Jump!

The copy is shown first!

 

It's the same with Soccer Physics!!#

 

Alphabear: Word Puzzle Game!

Seems more like a Match-3 game, but you can see clearly his "inspiration"!