Game clone raises questions about Mac App Store policing

04.02.2011
The 's carefully crafted reputation for raising the app walls high might be undermined with  that Apple allowed another developer to pirate Wolfire's game, --and at a far lower price point.

One of the arguable benefits of Apple's curated approach to the Mac App Store is that it supposedly keeps out the riff-raff, including pirates and pornographers. Developers endure a tough, often-confusing screening process and give up a cut of their sales to grab a bit of the Apple spotlight. Consumers use the store because it's easy, and because they feel assured that downloading from a trusted brand eliminates some of risk found elsewhere on the wild and wooly Internet.

But that doesn't mean there won't be disputes like the one in which Wolfire finds itself involved. As of Friday morning, the allegedly counterfeit game was still available in the Mac App Store, and Wolfire officials were growing ever more impatient as they watched the clone climb as high as number 62 on the store's list of paid gaming apps. The original game, on the other hand, is unranked.

"Apple is a big company with tons of apps to review and look over, but they also have a notoriously long review process--so we would have hoped they could have prevented something like this from happening," Wolfire's John Graham told on Thursday.

"People pirate our games all the time on the Pirate Bay, and people theoretically sell it on shady street corners," added Jeffrey Rosen, Wolfire's co-founder. "However, when Apple forces the Mac App Store onto your dock and trains people that this is the new way to buy Mac software safely ... suddenly it becomes a really big deal when someone counterfeits your app under the same name."

Lugaru HD features a butt-kicking bunny warrior in his quest to save fellow rabbits from slavery. Wolfire had been selling its game in the Mac App Store for two weeks, at $10 a download, when the company became aware on Monday of 99-cent version. Wolfire immediately contacted both iCoder and Apple, asking that the rival game be taken down.