| One of the reasons I like to open-source my work (even in “source-available” form), is so that there is clear “prior art.” However, I have yet to write an app that has been highly successful, so being copied has not been a problem for me. Seeing the behavior of these scammers, I have no doubt that they would gleefully take my source, tweak the storyboard, and release a clone. They don’t seem to have any sense of shame, at all. Some of these shops have stables of hundreds of apps; each, a minor tweak of other apps in their roster. It is annoying that Apple gives me a hard time for some small cosmetic detail on my app, while rubberstamping these tsunamis of pure, shameless garbage. I do get annoyed by “looks like” scams. A couple of years ago, my wife accidentally purchased a “looks like” app that was basically a screengrab of another app (and was approved on the App Store!). She was able to get the subscription (!) canceled, but it was a pain. Apple also left the junk app on the store. She was also so unnerved by the situation, that she never got the original app, so it shows that these spam/scam apps can cause a lot of collateral damage. Getting a refund did not fix the problem. |
Also... I just realized... in the same way the article OP mentioned they were ahead of everyone else wrt features/implementation etc, I wonder if the scammers are ahead of the game in terms of preternaturally staying under the App/Play Store radars? Like, specifically, exactly what might they be doing, I wonder?