This is a business, and running a business is difficult. Most businesses fail within the first few years. This is a given, but these aren't the stories being told. The review system is brutal. It can be both good and bad. The good is obvious. But when a bad review is written by a disgruntled fan or competitor, it can torpedo the sales of your app. Legal threats are the easiest way to eliminate the competition. There's no need to go to court, and sometimes you don't even need a lawyer. Just make a dubious claim of copyright infringement and send a letter. IAP for kids. Like I said on twitter, "it's like taking candy from a baby." Despite my negativity, I feel there's still an advantage for small indie developers. We're leading the way in terms of developing business models and creating new IP and game types. It's definitely round 2 in which the 'empire strikes back'. But it remains to be seen whether this is a window of opportunity that will close for indie devs*, or the upstarts will cause a disruption in the for-, I mean market. * Quote from creator of ultima series
I've had this done to me twice... I really dissapprove of it as a business practice. The first time I got quite worried (although there was no actual legal grounds for them to take action, it was just scare-tactics that made me a bit un-comfortable). Ended up having a meeting with the two legal teams that represent me and the result was essentially "well they can't sue you for anything as your just a competitor; but heres the holes in their letter which open them up for a libel and fraud suit"... It does depress me a little that theres is occassionally such a lack of proffessional integrity in business tho, for the most part everyone is quite pleasant, but there always seems to be the occassional bad egg every so often that just seems to come along and ruin it...
