Glyn Evans over at iphoneography brought a very interesting story to the public’s attention this weekend. A friend of his, SCW, was looking into some photography apps by the developer Molinker (the apps actually look curiously similar to those of other developers but that’s another story) and was very surprised by the ratings they were getting.
Many of their apps had around 50 five stars reviews. SCW found this to be a bit suspect and decided to examine these reviewers a little closer. When he looked into those reviewers they were surprisingly only reviewing molinker apps and rewarding them all a five stars. Furthermore the reviews were all poorly written.
What SCW deducted is that the developer was probably using his promocodes (every developer gets 50 of them for every app) on 50 of his own accounts to review his own apps.
Well, very upset SCW wrote to Phil Schiller about it and asked Glyn Evans to help him spread the word. Phil Schiller once done reading about himself in the NYtimes stepped in last night and banned Molinker from the App Store. He then wrote to SCW:
Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.
What’s incredible is that the developer had 1011 apps, which is almost 1% of the entire App Store. Well that’s 1% of the App Store that no longer exists. If their business model was to copy other apps and then rate them themselves they shouldn’t be surprised.
They shouldn’t be surprised, but they are: Julen over at AppFreak managed to contact Molinker who answered :
We got email from Apple yesterday [Sunday 6th] which told us our contract is changed to pending status.
Actually, we do not know what’s wrong so far. We had contacted Apple for such sudden changes, hope we can get quick response and actions from Apple.
I guess this story reconfirms my beliefs to never rely on the reviews in the App Store. The system is definitely flawed so my advice would be to stick around and rely on us when it comes to app reviews…
[iPhoneography via AppFreak, Picture via Flickr]
lol.. finally…
i got ripped too by them…
Good for the guy who caught it, and good for Apple for taking action on it fast. If they’re going to make it so hard for legit apps to be approved, they need to be equally tough on removing scams.
Thank you for posting this article! It’s honestly about how one major fraudulant developer got a bit cocky at his own expense. And how Philip, Glyn & Myself hope to make this a positive outcome for all current & future AppStore consumers.
Cheers SCW
The beauty of the AppStore is that it allows individuals to distribute their little own gems. The fact that some big players think they can get away with cheap tricks shows little respect for the community. I would like to hear back from Molinker anyway
Thanks for posting this and I hope AAPL pays more attention to this type of scam in the App Store.
The Chinese love to pull off scams like these.
Gameloft just did the same thing with Modern Sandstorm. Go look at Dec. 7th and get back to me.
hey will this result in a lawsuit against molinker for repaying back customers, since they lied to their customers and tricked them in to buying their apps?