Lets use this thread to list developers who use unethical business practices in order to promote and/or sell their games. If you would like me to add anything to this list (such as different crimes that should be included, offending devs, etc.), please post. The Crimes 1. Review Shilling Review shilling is the practice of pretending to be a consumer and reviewing one's own product. This can be committed on both the App Store review section and on various websites. 2. IP Theft IP theft is the practice of stealing Intelectual Property (for example, if a game used a character like Mario or Master Chief, but did not have permission from Nintendo or Bungie to do so) from a company. This includes stealing characters, sounds, story, and even text fonts (to a certain extent, only if they are unique enough). 3. Misleading Descriptions/Name Misleading descriptions or names is the practice of intentionally leading customers to believe an app is something that it is not. This includes implying that features are in the product, but are not actually included, and misleading customers into thinking an app is a completely unrelated app without explicitly claiming it to be so (examples include developer Khalid Shaikh's apps that mislead users into thinking that they are Doom and iDracula, but are actually just sound boxes). 4. Key Word Spamming Key Word Spamming is the practice of writing various words in an app's description on the App Store solely to gain views from users searching for those words. This is often preceded with the text "Recommended for fans of:" and followed by a list of popular apps. Sadly, this practiced is used by some high profile development companies. 5. Price Change/Update Lies Price Change/Update Lies are when a developer lies about the future price of an application (for example, when a developer claims that an app is being offered at a low introductory price, but never raises the price to the full price) or when a developer makes promises (or implies) that updates will be released for the app, but never fulfills those promises. Reporting and Investigating You can report a developer by posting in this thread. Make sure to post the developer's name, the offending apps, a description of the crime, and proof of the crime (a link to a forum post by the dev, a link to the app's App Store page, etc.) If you suspect some reviews on the App Store are by the developer, and they are review shilling, check out what other apps the reviewers have reviewed in the past. The developers usually aren't too clever, and will only review their other apps. The Blacklist -Khalid Shaikh - Added July 21, 2009 for the crimes of: IP Theft (multiple counts), Misleading Descriptions/Name (multiple counts) -Gplex - Added July 21, 2009 for the crimes of: Review Shilling (multiple counts), IP Theft -TouchSoft Mobile - Added July 21, 2009 for the crimes of: Price Change/Update Lies -NDMaple - Added July 21, 2009 for the crimes of: IP Theft, Price Change/Update Lies -Peabrain Games - Added July 22, 2009 for the crimes of: Price Change/Update Lies, Misleasing Descriptions/Name -Slava Bushtruk - Added July 22, 2009 for the crimes of: IP Theft (multiple counts) -InfoMedia, Inc - Added July 22, 2009 for the crimes of: Review Shilling (multiple counts), Key Word Spamming -Trapster.com - Added July 22, 2009 for the crimes of: IP Theft, Review Shilling
What did they do? Also, the devs of B owman are one I've heard about, but I'm not sure what they did, so I don't want to put them on yet.
Other than release shovelware, what have they done? NDMaple's 3D World has environments from that paper airplane game from another dev though.
It's a bit worse than that. For 3D World, they basically just took a preset model from Unity Engine, slapped it in the appstore, and put a price tag on it. It's 0% developing and all unlicensed publishing. A few months ago, they submitted an addition to their description that there would be a secret island and a gun the customer can use in the next update. They said that it was being reviewed by Apple. It's taken "Apple" about six months to "review" it, and apparently, they haven't finished yet. I think that's a bit fishy, but them stealing the preset from Unity and calling it theirs is pretty bad.
Wow. That is really disgusting behavior. Has DS Effects done anything like that? All I see from them is a bunch of shovelware games.
Nah, they're games suck incredibly, but at least they use their own graphics. The sound effects are impossible to pin down unless they're really specific (Itsa me, Maaaario!"), but they're pretty legit legally.
I don't think it's much more than just shovelware. Are we sure that Khalid does more than shovelware? And for one thing, I apologize for my repetitive sentence typo there. I'm getting tired, and I should go to bed. Edit: I think the reason why I wanted to add DS Effects was because of their "All 65 Games" reminded me of "Action 52", a game released in 1991 with terrible programming, unplayable games, and was sold for $200. It remains the biggest scam in gaming history.
Maybe you should just write the crimes instead of abbreviating them into numbers... it won't save a lot of time you know. -.-'; People have to scroll back and forth to read what the numbers stand for.
I'm pretty sure Megan Fox didn't hire him to write an app for her He wrote like 6 paragraphs worth of definition. My index and middle finger (multitouch track pad, ftw!) don't mind
I meant instead of writing "1", s/he could've simply written "Review Shilling" or something, so no scrolling around is needed. Anyway the list is very helpful in deciding what games to not buy. I have a few more grudges against some companies but they don't classify as "crimes", just really really really bad customer service I suppose.
It shouldn't take much time at all when the list is as small as it is now. It probably would make it look better too. Thanks for the suggestion.
Definitely peabrain games... Pixel, originally gamelab, had the promise of a new update every month which included a new game.... Hey they've updated it once I think since release which was sometime last year I think. Sorry if some one said peabrain games because I just went straight to the reply buttton
I believe they were shilling their game, so yeah... don't really know what exactly happened but shilling was involved.
Yeah i hate DS Effects too. Although they sorta do a bit of false advertisement, but all they are really doing is stretching the truth a bit not lying outright. What they say is in the app is there but it's just not as good as they make it. Plus all the reviews say that the games are utter crap too so they're not review shilling. Can we make a category for devs who just push out shovelware apps without any good ones? I havn't found an app by these guys with a rating of over 2 stars.
Makayama.com for their 'Flight Stunts' which used to have all fake, pre-rendered 'screenshots' of their game which they have now kept, but just labelled them with 'artist's impression'. I wish I had the power to obliterate the shit out of developers such as these.
