Anyone noticing a trend in fake reviews for the top apps?

You're focusing on what is beyond your control rather than what is within your control. That is not a recipe for success.

If you just want to express your frustration, that's fine. But you're going to have to think differently if you want to succeed. A super negative mindset is not going to help you find your path to success.

 

Wouldn't this thread be more useful if we actually posted real strategies? I posted one. Now it's your turn.

 

You can cheat paid apps as well with fake reviews since you don't need to install the game to review it.

With paid apps, you have to go through the procedure for refund request.
The action itself isn't taking much time, but the response takes a while to come.
But would Apple be spending so much time on good reasons on thousands of accounts asking for refunds?
Let's hope so.

However, to the cheater aiming at boosting downloads, that would cost him substantially more money than for a free app. The sweatshop owner would logically need to get a safe margin and surely he would not pay the app before you give him money to do so, so I'd expect like a cost per scammy install around +25% to +50% the price on the store, and he might have you pay for the risk of not getting a refund, which is rather high, plus the time needed to fill the form in man hours (unless a script is used since all of this can be easily automated, there's not a single random element present in the process). However, after Apple's share (30%) and any kind of tax (say about 20%), you'd get a return of 50% on your app.


Theoretical deal

You want 10K downloads on your app priced at $0.99.
You'll have to give the scammer around $0.99 for each install, but since there's some minimal man-hour needed plus some risks taken, even if there's a script behind both the download and the refund-form filling, you may have to forward something like a surplus of $2,000, for a grand total of $12K.

He or his team spend the money ($0.99 per app) and fill a refund form for each one of them and get like 25%* refunds in a few months tops (so globally he gains an average of $0.25 per app, which is good in Asia).
Meanwhile, since the money is spent on your app, you get around 50% of it (Apple+tax take the other half), and recover $5,000 on the initial 12K.
Eventually if the guy is really nice and both parties trust each other, let's say he agrees to pay you back like 50% some months later from the $2000 surplus because the operation is successful. So $1000.
In the end, you've paid between $6,000 and $7,000 for your 10K downloads.

* 25% or more, I don't know the rates of refunds; those are arbitrary numbers anyways. If the refund rate is higher, the surplus for safety and man-hours might be lower.

The scam would become even more effective if prices were lowered to $0.49, as you'd get a lot of downloads for little expenditure, and since your app never went free, you could bump the price for the next 7 days to 1.99 as it gets more traction due to a higher rank.


As for Android, if that crap can fly, anything goes really.

 

You mean there's like two apps "don't tape the white tile" now?

 

So what if what is in your control can't compete with what's outside of your control and literally kills your chances of living a honest life by developing software?
Super naive positiveness won't do wonders against hard numbers.
We'll see where this thing goes. I hope it won't escalate.

 

I never suggested being naive would be helpful.

If it's hard to make a name for yourself in the apple app store, make a name for yourself outside the apple app store. Maybe sell your game on your own website, where there are no cheaters to contend with. There seven billion people on earth. Find your niche audience, it's there.

Rock bands have had to deal with this stuff for decades, because it's nearly impossible to get commercial radio airplay. Learn from them!

 

RUN AWAY!!
Flee the app store. Not exactly looking for a solution on the store, are we?

At this point, I wouldn't even bother trying to launch an app inside a website without having a maximum of money to spend on advertising, because otherwise you're alone on your website.

I'd rather sell hotdogs.

 

Well, there really is no way to do any marketing on the app store itself. Apple chooses what gets featured. Most of your efforts will have to be placed elsewhere, that's just a fact of the system. If you can't make a name for yourself outside the app store there's no reason to expect you can make a name for yourself inside the app store either.

 

How about one may have planned to make apps well suited for mobile and tablets and had ieas for those supports that simply don't transfer well to other types of hardware?
Besides you generalize way too fast imho. The internal ranking system and other factors of mobile stores, compared to say the wild PC area, make the markets rather different. The PC market is also large in total, but very segmented. Steam only counts like 7M users I think, or perhaps members only.
There are pros and cons. There are less way to cheat certain software platforms on PC, but getting exposure isn't easy at all.

 

You can make apps for the app store, but you can't market them on the app store. Beyond being featured by apple, which is largely out of your control (but not entirely), or raising or lowering your prices, there's not much you can do within the app store itself. You're going to have to make a name for yourself and get exposure outside the app store.

 

Manipulating the charts is nothing new. Maybe you are too new to the store to know it. If apples find a clear breach of their rules, they will act accordingly.

Maybe you should get in contact with Apple instead of writing here since im oretty sure there is not much traffic in this section.
Maybe let your lawyer write a complaint to apple. Maybe sue Apple that they leave such competition on the store.

fact is spot #1 on the charts will never be yours. Complaining that someone else is sitting in the chaor you want does not matter. If the app in question gets banned #2 will take its place.

So how exactly is this affecting you? Not on a theoretical or maybe spiritual basis but in practical terms. I dont see any. Maybe if your #11 and the page just shows 10 apps without scrolling it actually hurts you that somebody took a place in front of you by non allowed ways. is this the case? daar from it.

as glork wrote this is out of your control. Rambling about it on the internet does not change a thing. Go with the party you have a contract with and ask them. Its apple btw.

And maybe stop accusing other developers of fraud without real evidence you can proove.

There are manipulations and corruption happening everyhwere. Thats life. Apple sweeps once in a while through its store and removes some of it if it has the means todo so.

there is a reason incentive install sdk where banned etc. but you seem late to the party so maybe you missed some cleanups.

Not everyone who is sucessfull on the store scams.


And as for the thread. I have yet to see something construcitve from you in this matter? Did you wrote you apple yet?

Edit:

Checked out the white tile app on appnies, looked over their chart history and a bit into their reviews and i dont see anything wrong. Successfull a droid game from japan that swapped over with the release of the ios version and resparked android sales again. Ranking curves across countries and appstores look ok.