One thing we inadvertently become a bit desensitized to around here at TouchArcade is just how absurd a lot of the things about the mobile ecosystem actually are. Scam apps are totally normal, one developer flooding the App Store with 100 slightly differently themed slot machine games is just another Tuesday, and the App Store search advertising showing a competing game before the actual game you’re searching for is just how it works. When you take a step back from all this, it’s super messed up, as Epic founder Tim Sweeney discovers in a series of tweets that are getting a lot of traction:
Ok, let’s try to find Fortnite on the iOS App Store. What’s the top result? pic.twitter.com/nypYHctyDC
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018
PUBG is an awesome game, but it’s probably not the thing someone typing “Fortnite” is looking for. Ok, so let’s search for PUBG then: pic.twitter.com/3cvxF7Kpqb
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018
I haven’t played Kick the Buddy, but it looks pretty cool. So let’s try searching for it: pic.twitter.com/gaQfK1cWlK
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018
Let’s search for iTunes: pic.twitter.com/eL920cwAdz
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018
Amazon Prime Video: pic.twitter.com/EHDbMqucAW
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018
Really, how did we get to this state? The store prioritizes ad revenue above user intent, so now developers buy ads in front of each others’ products so that exactly nobody’s search results lead to the actual thing they typed. Who in this cycle isn’t crazy?
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018
And, well, it’s hard to argue with the conclusion. When I’ve tweeted similar dumb examples of this happening over the years, the only real vaguely reasonable rebuttal to this being allowed is “How else is your game supposed to get traction?" Which… I mean, I guess? It just seems real weird to me to be able to squat actual legit trademarked words in search results. If PUBG and Fortnite want to fight over who spends the most advertising money to show up first when someone searches for “shooter," “battle royale," “multiplayer," or similar… That makes sense. Specific, trademarked game titles though? That feels gross. Or, hell, maybe when someone searches for a specific thing that thing should show up first with the ad second?
It seems like there’s a ton of things that could be done to this system to make it feel less gross, but, unfortunately, it’d actively be asking Apple to make less money on the App Store monopoly so the chances of any of that happening is exactly 0%.
