App cloning is a problem that impacts both large and small developers. In a nutshell, a cloner decrypts an app, then sucks out the binary. Once they have the binary, they modify it and resubmit it to the App Store as their own. A difficult problem for Apple to solve. They’d either need to apply significantly more resources to screening submitted apps, or take more time per app with existing resources, which would slow the review process to a crawl.
The app had only been out three months, and already the creators of A Beautiful Mess were scrambling to deal with a big problem: clones, copycats, and rip-offs, as many as seven of them, crowding the search results in the App Store. The clones appeared to be legitimate, affiliated versions, yet as all the developers knew, they were anything but. The CEO of the company that created the original A Beautiful Mess called them “infuriating.”
And getting rid of a clone is no easy task.
A Beautiful Mess developers tried to have the clones removed. “When we reported an IP infringement through Apple’s system, [Apple] would e-mail the company we were accusing and CC us on it,” said Trey George, the business development manager for A Beautiful Mess, in an e-mail to Ars. George believed that most of the clones originated with two operations, which he believed would feign innocence when confronted in a bid to buy time.
Clones and the like have been around the App Store almost since its inception. But this scourge has now become commonplace.
Android’s lack of strong oversight can lead to an even worse problem. Clymer highlighted the recent case of the game Gentlemen!, which was purchased legitimately 144 times and pirated more than 50,000 times.
Glad to see this problem getting the exposure it needs.
Maybe I’m crazy, but looking at the clone copies of Beautiful Mess on Ars, with their only slight name variations- wouldn’t it be easy for Apple to check against this stuff? An app with almost the exact same name as another but from a different developer should be a HUGE red flag.
Definitely a worthy point, but one I’d take with caution. Apple is a smart company, and I can only imagine they are working hard to solve this problem. My guess is, there is no easy solution or Apple would already have implemented it.
Still, your point is valid. I wonder if there’s not some set of pattern that Apple can look for to trigger an alarm to at least inspect for a potential clone.
Happy to see some real coverage of this vs painting Android as the only one with a big problem in this area. #props
You can have exact same names as long as the identifiers are different. Close names can’t be the way. There has to be something in the binary or otherwise used to compare.