Is it just me or are more and more bad developers coming to the appstore? I can't stand when they put "Sure to be the next:.." and they list all the top apps so if someone searches for those they will have thier app come up. Or when you CLEARLY have the bulk of the reviews being done by the developers themselves. Just today I saw two apps in the same category with the same icon. And the worst part was the icon was of the hasbro game they were cloning (not even a real icon for thier game). Then when I clicked on them I checked the reviews and most are by accounts that the only review is for thier app and maybe a negative review for the other app. They were both like this. The problem I see if what if apple stops searching the full description for keywords when a users searchs. This will just hurt the good developers who actually put useful info in the decription.
People heard that people were becoming overnight millionaires on iPhone games... and, well... It's all just a little bit of history repeating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_gold_rush
I think it is sad the people work hard to make apps and then try to cheat and get more money. Resulting in distrust. I guess we should avoid them.
Keyword spamming and fake reviews. Just another day at the sneaky, underhanded business office. It is an unfortunate and annoying thing when I see it -- but when I do see it, that developer and anything they've made or ever will make immediately get top billing on my "people never to buy from and suggest others avoid, too" list. If a developer lacks even a basic set of ethics to conduct a clean business then they aren't worth wasting any more of my time on except perhaps to help others avoid wasting their time, too.
The sad part is that its paying off for them. They have a similiar game to mine and in less then a few days my ranking has been droping steadily. For the longest time I had been in roughly the same position in the top paid word games section, but now I am quite a few spots less. Also, my sales have dropped quite badly too. Frankly I would rather my game failed then stoop to that level. Its just bad that after I spent time thinking of ways to make my game work better for the iPhone and build my own graphics that really all that was nessessary was a 1-1 copy of the original game and steal all thier images. /rant
It's just marketing. Being a good developer doesn't mean being a good business person. I would rather a great game do 'sketchy' marketing to get noticed then a terrible game doing the same thing to get noticed.
I would, if I had a iphone The keyword spam on the Tower Bloxx page is effing unbelievable. 'We watched House Season 5 and The Dark Knight while making this!' And they do this on TOP of making a great looking, yet lazily simple game which makes me dislike them even more for putting graphics over originality and gameplay..
Oh, don't tell me about paid reviews. I've had a fair share of dealing with those. Usually though, our own TOFTT team can clean it up. In any case, due to sites like these consumers can usually get the right game. If a game is truly good it will shine, and if it isn't, well then that's the end of the line .
I ignore people who are obviously decepting people by such tactics like paid reviews or saying people who bought this game may also have <list of 50 games> Stick to quality devs, thats what I usually do
I hadn't seen their keyword spam before (it seems to be gone now) but if it was indeed as egregious as is being said then yeah... I'd pretty much put them on my mental ignore list. I mean, Trip Hawkins should bloody well know better.
You can't have it both ways. Sketchy marketing is sketchy marketing. Maybe some are engaging in it because they feel like they have to when others are doing so just to compete -- but that's bollocks as far as I'm concerned. If you really want to compete, write a better game.
Theoretically that's true, but with over 20 million iPod/iPod Touch users out there and only a few thousand on Touch Arcade, most consumers are just getting the games iTunes throws at them in the Top 20. Share and enjoy,
There is the app QwasiPad that says, " Coming soon, Windows Media Center Remote feature are ready to be added to the first update". I was thinking about buying this app for the WMC features. I am glad I didn't. it is misleading. I'll never buy from them.
While I agree keyword spaming and fake reviews are shady. I won't support devs that do that. I would rather support someone that actually worked to get their customers not trick people into becoming a customer. But with these two devs I think they completely crossed the line by using the image of the Hasbro game itself and used it as the icon and in their interface. One even took the whole interface from the game and put it on the iPhone. I'm sure is Hasbro sees this they will not be happy.
