The Apple app store has a long history of terrible, terrible practices when it comes to video games. The store is filled with clones, as in that every time a popular game begins to make waves, almost 100 percent identical carbon copies of that game appear less than a day later in an effort to make money off the original's success.
Sometimes it's not even clones that are the issue, but blatant cases of copyright infringement. From fake Mario to Pokemon, these scammers know uninformed buyers (or children) will click purchase if they can name their game cleverly enough.
Such is the case with the $6.99 Minecraft: Pocket Edition 2. Such a thing doesn't officially exist, but that hasn't stopped the game from being sold on the app store, even making it as far as #4 on Itunes paid app chart. The description certainly makes it sound like Minecraft:
Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. Minecraft II is taking those activities to a whole new level of excellence and uniqueness. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things.
The screenshots too are from Minecraft. Spoiler alert: it's not Minecraft 2. It's not even a clone of Minecraft. Eurogamer has tried the game out, and it's actually nothing like Minecraft at all. Instead, it's a game featuring Scorpion from Mortal Kombat fighting zombies.
Even the creator's name is a blatant attempt to cash in on the popularity of the work of others. The creator Minecraft: Pocket Edition 2 goes by the name Scott Cawthorn on the app store, a misspelled version of Five Night's at Freddy's creator Scott Cawthon. This isn't "Cawthorn's" first scam, either. The creator has also sold Mortal Kombat and Five Night's at Freddy's, all of which have five-star reviews.
How does Apple allow this to happen? They apparently don't pay too much attention to what's going on in the app store, leaving it up to developers to notify them of blatant copyright infringement like this. Mojang is currently working on getting the game removed from the App store, but so far it's still available.
