If you’ve read the comments below (from people affiliated with Vulpi?) you can see there is some debate as to whether or not this game was stolen or if it was developed legitimately within the usage guidelines of the free template that Utopian Games provided to a number of GameSalad users through their Deep Blue Apps joint venture w/ GameSalad. It is a site where GameSalad developers can purchase “Instant Game creation Templates” (this one is actually free) to help them with their game creation.
Darren at Utopian Games has provided me with a screenshot of the artwork that was included in their free “Shadow Run” template. They only got a stripped down code version of a runner game not Shadow Run, the artwork was nothing more than squares. So the developer of Infinite Run had to have gotten their very Shadow Run-like artwork from an alternate source. I was sent a copy of the Template file and I can confirm there were nothing but squares, nothing even close to resembling Sprite Attack’s artwork!
As of this update, Infinite Run has been pulled from the App Store, whether this was done willingly or by Apple, I have no idea.
Earlier this week, Macedonia-based publisher Vulpi Inc. released an endurance run title called Infinite Run. The thing is, this game was already released over a month ago by Utopian Games under the title Shadow Run. Having reviewed a number of Utopian’s games in the past, I immediately recognized the icon and Sprite Attack’s signature graphical style.
Vulpi’s game is nothing more than an exact ripoff of Utopian Game’s previously released tile, including the graphical assets. Somehow the developer was able to crack Utopian’s game and then modify the assets slightly to rename the game. When I contacted Darren at Utopian yesterday and brought the matter to his attention, he was shocked and upset and said he was going to immediately contact with Apple about getting the title removed.
Utopian Game’s Shadow Run is on the left, Vulpi’s Infinite Run is on the right
I reached out to Vulpi for comment, but as of right now, their app remains on the App Store and I haven’t received any sort of response. Vulpi has quite a number of other apps on the store, so I’m left to question the legitimacy of these apps as well. Comments I left on their Facebook page were removed.
Let this be a lesson to developers and publishers out there. It is impossible for Apple to catch all such cases of app theft, the best they can do is react after the fact, as was the case with Halfbot’s The Blocks Cometh. In that case a developer stole Halbot’s Flash game and published their version of it on the App Store while Halfbot was in the middle of developing their own iOS release. You need to remain vigilant and make sure your hard work is not being stolen by lazy people just out to try to make a quick buck. The only way to combat this is for Apple to adopt a no-tolerance policy dealing out immediate bans to violators.
