Gaming The Apple App Store

A list is a list, right? Not, apparently, when it comes to Apple's app store rankings of games. Shady practices have compromised the integrity of Apple's rankings, and the company's slow response so far is affecting consumers and developers alike. We talk to video game advertising expert Kevin Joyce from Liquid Advertising, delving into the questions of why Apple isn't doing more, and what the fallout might be for honest companies just trying to play by the rules.

In an Opinion piece in the upcoming April issue of Game Informer (#228) Joyce, managing director at advertising agency Liquid, details some of the practices that developers use to push their games up the Apple app store ranking list – which is a crucial driving force for sales. These include using bots to inflate the download numbers, strategically planned price drops, buying apps with hacked accounts, and more.

Just last week, a fake game (it didn't even work, nevermind that it wasn't a sanctioned Pokémon product) called Pokemon Yellow (above) shot up to the top of the charts. Thankfully Apple pulled the app and offered a refund to those who were duped. Joyce calls this attack of the clones, which is "threatening to the integrity of the marketplace."

"In the film world it’s not uncommon to see rip-off artists release a sound-alike movie, hoping to scoop up DVD rentals by confused folks," he says. "Think 'Transmorphers' vs. 'Transformers.' Most people wouldn’t fall for that. But app consumers are different, because you’re dealing with less established properties in general. What’s the real game – Temple Run or Temple Jump…or Temple Guns? The icons look identical. Did your friend recommend Plant vs. Zombie or Plants vs. Zombies? Is Pokemon Yellow legit? Must be, since Apple must have approved it and it is ranked highly."

Here are two examples of the kind of surge that a game can experience in the charts due to fraudulent practices. Click each image to enlarge. Note: The app's ranking in a category is listed along the left-hand side.

"Note that the game does not even chart in any category other than Educational until January 30," Joyce says . "Suddenly, the game skyrockets to #28 overall and well within the top 25 in the Arcade and Games categories. A week later, this game – which the rankings would suggest was incredibly popular –  begins a quick decline. However, the exposure from the ranking position has at least given them enough legitimate downloads to qualify as a definite improvement on their pre-promotion situation."

"Here is a game that has had some success within the Card genre, and even cracked the top 200 in Adventure. Somehow, more than two months after launch and a week after not seeing a bump from the release of a new, updated version, the game skyrockets – from virtually out of nowhere – to #31 Overall, #22 in Games, #2 in Cards, and #7 in Adventure."

We talked to Joyce, who has worked at Liquid for five years and participated in a wide variety of video game advertising campaigns for all kinds of gaming systems and genres, and he spoke about the effect these various shady practices could have on the store in the future. For an in-depth look at the problem, be sure to read Joyce's full opinion piece in the April issue of Game Informer (#228).

Why doesn't Apple do more to stop some of these ranking schemes? Is it a case of companies always being one step behind the "bad guys?"
"Yeah, It's true that the bad guys may always be able to outrun the good guys a little bit, or for brief periods of time. But I honestly do not know why Apple does not root out some of these problems sooner. They have an approval process, and the approval process is very poorly understood. It just seems like in that process, bad apps, clone apps, things like that should be weeded out, and I don't understand why they aren't. In terms of the bots, I think it's probably just a matter of the burden of proof, or trying to prove that these things are fake. [Apple] might just think, 'It's not worth our time getting into a legal battle over something that is maybe a couple hundred apps out of hundred thousand apps in the store.' That's my only explanation, that they think it's too small potatoes to care, because obviously they could do whatever they want. It's their system."

But to your clients, it's not small potatoes…
"No, exactly, it's not small potatoes to them. It's the kind of thing that has them like, 'What is happening?! I just spent real money building this real game, promoting it, and going through all the proper channels, and then what is this garbage?!' This is just one part of Apple's business, and obviously they are the wealthiest company in the world right now. This is just a section of iTunes, so it's something that our clients are focused on every day and solely. Whereas perhaps for Apple it's just a little too peripheral to get involved on such a nitty gritty level."

Would there be an arms race among developers where good developers have to act bad just to keep up? What's the doomsday scenario if it goes unabated?
"I think what it really hurts is the middle class of apps. The big guys have the resources, and they have the relationship with Apple. When they have a marquee app, there are proper channels they can go through. They navigate them. They spend the money. It happens with fairly understandable results. The small guys have nothing to lose, so they'll try whatever. It's the guys in the middle who have something to lose because they're trying to build a business, but they don't have the resources. So maybe what they'll end up having to do is feel less confident about self-publishing and having to go to partner with the big guys to handle the marketing of their game because they won't have faith in the app store anymore as a fair marketplace for them. Or, they maybe they will just get out of the game."

Is something like this happening in the Android market?
"It's interesting. There are a lot of crap apps for Android because there is no gate. There's not the curation that Apple provides. However, when it comes to rankings, Android has been very smart, I think, with their algorithm. Their algorithm is much more geared around actual app usage and actual time an app spends installed on a device, which are genuine measure of an apps' popularity then compared to Apple. No one knows because they won't tell anybody, but all the evidence points to it being driven, like 99 percent, by installs. Even though Android is a far less profitable platform for developers than iOS is, historically at least, the ranking system is more fair. It inoculates against some of the more common types of fraud that are apparent on the iTunes store."

Is there any possibly of Apple adopting an algorithm like Android's, or would they not do that just because they what to do it their own way?
"I don't know. Is it a question of, 'Apple doesn't want to adopt that because they do not want to reveal how intrusive they are in terms of how much data they are collecting?' I think that's possible. I don't know if it's a valid one. I think to answer that question you have to know what people's expectations are of Apple's insight into how long the app is on their phone and whatnot. My guess is that on balance, people would rather have a fair marketplace even if it came at the expense of it being revealed that Apple knows a whole lot about you. I don't know this for a fact, but I would guess that Apple has all types of usage data that Google does. And if not, then, I'd think they'd want to get on that.
"I'm sure they want to keep a contrast between themselves and Google, and yeah, they're Apple, they can do whatever they want. They're the biggest company in the world. Right now, things are going well for them on the app store. People are spending, so the fallout hasn't happened yet. But, I feel they should just communicate their reasons, and I think that they have a client base of developers that is scratching their heads. Some of them have direct lines to Apple that they deal with, and others maybe don't get the time of day from Apple at all, so they are even more in the dark. They're like, 'Maybe EA knows the whole deal, but I don't. I'm just some little dude. All I can do is log on to the Apple website and troll it for instructions or something.' I think a little transparency would go a long way, and the folks who get up in arms about this stuff, they're like the very vocal minority of the Internet and can really take an issue like this and turn it into a lot of fodder."

Are consumers catching on to the shady practices?
Yeah, I think they are. All you need to do to see that is look at all the comments for these clone apps and bot apps. People are like, 'What just happened?! I downloaded this; I can't return it. It's clearly a fraud. What is the deal?!' So, I think it'll spread if it's left unattended to. But I think it's far from being in the public consciousness.