After seeing crap rip-off after crap rip-off climb the charts with nothing but stolen icons or screen shots to support them I'm wondering if it's time for developers to team up and either have Apple remove completely the app store approval process, or ask for it to be made unbelievably strict. It seems the place we're in now is nothing more than a mechanism to delay releases and accomplishes absolutely nothing. "Temple Jump" recently went to #1 on the overall paid charts, and a new game named "Temple Guns" appears to be quickly climbing the charts today as well. These types of scams provide no value, and will only deter users from trying out unknown games if they get burned. A third option(and maybe the best) is to remove any approval process, but to rank apps not based on download numbers, but instead a metric that ranks apps based on popularity, user ratings, and even with some tweaks from Apple, how "sticky" they are. With this method, an app being rated 1 stars by everyone(as these scams typically are) would be excluded from rankings, they could possibly even display a warning to the user before installation that this application is rated unusually low and it may be a scam. Whatever the solution, it's time for developers to tell Apple that enough is enough. These practices by scammers are reducing the brand of the App Store, and hurting all of us.
If they took out the approval process the store would implode with spam. As for similar titles/ripoffs... well... first mover advantage only lasts so long unfortunately.
I sort of think you aren't aware of what first mover advantage is, or you aren't aware what "Temple Jump" and "Temple Guns" are... My point about there being no approval and changing their rankings would hopefully take care of the pointless approval process as it exists today(spam apps still abound). It would also provide more relevant chart ranking since spam apps being given 1 stars would quickly remove them from any ranking while simultaneously warning users they are probably about to download a scam application.
how strict should such a process be.. like on xbox live where there are only a handfull of release slots every year? the approval process is not about quality.. and screenshots are not part of the approval process, but if people buy games no screenshots or only a title screen showing its their own fault.. you can buy Chinese iphone knock offs from the internet and if people would not buy them they would not been produced.. so who is at fault here? the power is with the customer.. if they don't even have the simplest form of common sense and can differentiate between company x and individual y.. its their own fault.. in the end even games like temple jump have content behind them, no matter the quality.. and therefore it got approved.. now if developer x has a problem with product y of someone else he can take it up with apple.. which everyone can do if he is entitled to..
Apple actually does this, though not to the full extent as what you're suggesting. The algorithm that ranks apps is a weighted combination of downloads within the hour, over the past few days, user engagement, and likely a few other factors which are unknown, but could include star ratings. Nobody outside of Apple really knows the breakdown though, and most likely the heaviest weight is on the number of downloads.
I humbly think you are posing the wrong solution to the real problem. Yes, App Store approval is arbitrary and doesn't assure quality despite the representation but it is very difficult to make it so because it is always subjective, they might know what the customers want and enjoy more than a developer, some business reasons may factor in their reviewing, it may be gamed via Apple employee corruption, etc. But it is still better than nothing. The indie developer community should be focusing instead on ideas and approaches to remove the reliance on the ranking for sales the App Store has and see if they can get Apple to adopt some of them. For example, one problem with the current system is that the rankings only show case a few and for all practical purposes hide everything else. So apps or either hits or they die. Very little middle ground that justifies the development costs. It certainly doesn't promote growing popularity over a long period of time with well-designed apps. This is not good for indie developers at all even if they come up with apps that are 100 times better than an existing apps that game the system or have a good marketing budget. There are simple retailing techniques used at other online retailers (not other app stores) that are designed to push out as many of their goods as possible as long as people like them, not artificially create quick winners and losers as the Apple AppStore does which promotes gaming the system. The hope for the indie developer community depends on somehow making Apple change to the former from the latter.
It is frustrating because we assume that the approval process will protect us from all these things but in reality it just isn't feasible. One reviewer cannot know the entire contents of the store, nor is there a simple way to determine when a game is "too derivative" of another, or even to know which one was actually conceived first. It seems like the recommended reviews could be used more strongly in the ranking, considering the #7 US paid app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pokemon-yellow/id501950963?mt=8 Or even Zynga's latest, as discussed in another thread: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dream-heights/id477752455?mt=8 Very interesting as the recommended reviews are all 1 star, yet the average is 4.5 (US Free rank#12). Just a thought. I think most of us would like to see some changes in the store.
Not to be snarky or condescending but the app approval process has never been to protect the developer. It has been to protect Apple's image and ecosystem and to a smaller extent protect the customer but primarily as it applies to maintaining the image. I am sure you will agree that it is not a solution to all that is wrong with the AppStore. I am not sure what you mean by recommended reviews. If you mean the helpful (or not) flags one can register in iTunes (and NOWHERE else), then that system is as heavily gamed as anything in the AppStore. In fact, most of the regular users are not even aware of what it does in the order of reviews seen. Sometimes, I think it is only the developers and their competition that uses it to re-order the reviews. So using that for any ranking will only promote more gaming of the system. It would be far better to have a retail outlet that doesn't depend so much on rankings but just lets people find apps easily and allows comparison shopping. For example, if one went to the Zynga app and saw so many negative reviews, one should be able to see a list of similar apps on that page (not also bought which is useless) so they can quickly decide which ones they want to buy amongst them. That way even new apps can gain visibility and if they are better than incumbent top-ranked apps will quickly raise in the ranks. Just this change will make developers focus on building better apps than playing the ranking game. This is what is behind some of the online retailers who are interested in pushing all of their products to let customers choose, not artificially creating winners and losers like Apple does. But I am not sure Apple has that kind of retail in their genes since their own business model is buzz and image based. In terms of copyright protection, developers can send a copyright violation notice to Apple if they feel there is a copyright violation. Patents can help protect innovative things but most developers may not be in a position to enforce it against large companies. In the case of Zynga's app you linked, enough people (especially developers because they could be next) are outraged about the blatant copying of the concept that they have made sure to play that helpful flag knowing that it will order the reviews. But as you can see from the total ratings, it doesn't matter for Zynga as they, like most savvy or big developers, have mastered the rating game. The unfortunate thing is that most non-developer users don't care about copyrights or intellectual property. So if a developer rips off another and sells it at a cheaper price or free, customers will gladly take it regardless of the rip-off complaints. No one cares about copyrights and intellectual property rights unless they are the ones who created the intellectual property or stand to benefit from it. There are a lot more of consumers and copiers than innovators.
Wow, just realized now that 2 of the top 10 apps on the paid charts are scams. At some point this has to damage Apple's brand enough that they come up with a solution...don't they?
The guidelines state pretty clearly that quality is a factor. You don't have to read beyond the introduction to hit points about quality, cheating the system, and copying other developer's work. But, judging by the obvious scams that get through on a daily basis there's a disconnect between what Apple says and what Apple does.
well apparently the term quality is something very broad for apple. Never heart of an casecwhere an app was rejected because the art looked like crap or the gameplay was boring.. A quick glance into the daily release list makes it obvious that they do not care much about product quality... as for the guidelines, i know whats in there.. And the actual content is important not the blurb in the introduction. The bottom line is apple cant judge the actual quality of an app.. that would be against what made the store big in the first place.. an open platform.. even for amateurs. They already have the power to put what they like into the spotlight.. And imho if they actually want to scare away hobbyists they could just add a zero to the yearly subscription price and the developer numbers would crumble fast.. But thats also not in their interes.. Since they do marketing with their big numbers. Couple hundred thousand apps.. But how much is junk? Billion dollars of earnings.. But how much of that was scammed? Apple always earns no matter what and i would be surprised if they would change anything drastically.
What if I am a honest dev, but my app has a bug and I receive 1 star ratings because of that. We all know, how quick users give away 1 star even if it is their fault when something doesn't work. Now let say I updated my game and fixed the bug. Probably nobody would come back and rerate my game, because they either deleted it or they don't care anymore. How my game would have a chance to get back into the ranking list if nobdy sees it to rate higher after I updated it?
Well, if you have predominantly 1 star ratings there's probably something wrong with the app. Whether it be a scam, or poor programming and testing, both are bad for the end user. I don't see a problem of a game so bugged out that it mostly receives 1 star ratings being excluded from ranking lists.
Sure they can (even if they currently don't). "Walled garden" is what everyone else calls it. Some amateurs/hobbyists make amazing stuff, but the term "amateur hour" actually appears in the guidelines - in the derogatory sense. I don't care if you're a "pro" an "amateur" or a cat. The product should speak for itself. Total crap shouldn't get through, and scams certainly shouldn't get through.
Seriously? Good lord, how is this even possible?! Pokemon Yellow...seriously!!! And it keeps moving up. It is NOW NUMBER 2 of the the Top 25!!! This really burns me up as my team and I worked 8 months and spent over a 100k of our own money to produce a high quality gaming experience only to lose it in a mixture of scams and big money advertising.
As mentioned by Mr. Ugly, a price increase for the developer license would be a very simple and effective solution...for devs and users. Apple, on the other hand, wants to make money. If the quality of the app store starts costing Apple money then they will make a change. I'm all for an increase in dev cost. $99 is insanely cheap.
well what qualifies for a scam? the temple jump game looked like a complete valid but crappy game.. from the screenshot i found on another website.. there was a character some stone ground textures and golems? or so .. not sure what the gameplay was but itself as a crappy game.. would not be against the rules.. the problem was for some reasons (icon) it looked similar to an existing game.. and apparently this dev tried the same trick several times.. so people but the crap and are dissapointed because its not what they expected.. ok but then again the pokemon example is also a good one.. should it be not on the appstore because its a possible scam? copyright violation? i would say no.. it should not be on the appstore because it crashes on startup.. who knows whats under there.. maybe a game boy emulator running the real old game.. so what should apple do.. question the copyright of every game released on their storefront? well no.. the dev is reliable not apple.. if you are a trademark holder you have to monitor such things and fight infringements, not apple.. i mean lets exaggerate, the guy who released the pokemon junk could be in the possession of a valid license to the ip and be allowed to publish an ios version of the game.. as unlikely as it is.. apple already has filters in place and rejects apps who use someone trademarks within the search words .. but so faar this only applies to companies & brands already on the store. imho they should not be tighter on the police of things but act faster if such stuff happens.. i mean controversy about apps copying your hole address book onto their server unquestioned? is that more or less important than some third party copyright infringment .. or another clone of a popular game.. how many physics flinging games where released afterwards.. a myriade.. did someone cry out ? no.. since copying is "business as usual" again imho apple should react faster to possible ranking tempering and other security flaws.. the approval process is already a huge undertaking on their part and making it even more complicated and strict is surely not the proper way..
All this time Apple was going for quantity, not quality, so they can show off their stats for the media - there is X apps in App store now, we are the winners! I don't think approval process as such doesn't even exists anymore, look at this Pokemon Yellow game, all users report it doesn't even run, how the heck you can miss this? As much as my wallet would hate it, they should make developers license at least $1000, probably more. So much crap would be filtered out instantly.
If you're using deceptive descriptions, names, icons, screenshots, etc. it's a scam. Temple Jump may have been a working "game" but they tried real hard to make it look as if you were buying a paid version of Temple Run. Judging by all the reviews and tweets I saw they did a good job of that, and I'm sure Imangi got their share of undeserved complaints and hate mail as a result.
