The number two paid app on iOS is based on a $10 GameSalad template

gamasutra.com

48 points·Impossible··11 comments

Is there a good summary out there of all the ways black hats try to game the Apple Appstore?

My casual experience with the app store was that when I put my game up for sale I got contacted by people offering me good reviews, traffic, etc., which I turned down. (I thought my game was pretty good and would sell itself.) I got a bunch of viciously negative reviews which were always updated whenever I released a new version.

It seems like the black-hattery is pretty straightforward -- brute force.

what's the name of the game? i'll give it a shot!

Manta 2010 -- but it's sorely in need of an update

This article summarise one of the techniques that has been used recently: http://www.tuaw.com/2014/01/10/the-strange-shady-world-of-1-....

looks a bit like the "Bouncer" game for Nokia.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xDwdTYUzkHk/UASnQJj-cuI/AAAAAAAADm...

It was called Bounce, and Rovio had made a couple of titles for Nokia - http://www.rovio.com/en/our-work/games/archived-games

97 reviews, 3 star average rating. Not sure what the rating distribution is, but probably almost half (40) of the reviews are legitimate.

Assuming a 10% review rate, this game probably has 400 legitimate downloads - $400 revenue. Not bad.

The #2 paid app gets around 5-10k downloads per day so he is making a lot more than $400

I have seen numbers significantly above 5-10K downloads per day for a #2 paid app.

It only has ratings in the US, UK and AU stores. Not a single rating elsewhere. Pretty fishy.

Also the first review in both the US and UK stores says "better than flappy birds". (Note the plural)

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