In the case of the recently released Subway Rushers from Chinese publisher Classic Games they’ve done BOTH!
One look at the icon and most people will instantly recognize Halfbrick’s leading man, Barry Steakfries, except that nope, that isn’t Barry, it is an amateur Chinese boxer named Liu Qiang (I Googled the name)?! Lets be honest, the character on the icon looks about as Chinese as I do! Sure in the screenshots, Liu Qiang looks a lot more like himself, but the icon is so obviously Barry Steakfries with a different hairdo and outfit. Just take a look at the Jetpack Joyride and Subway Rushers icons side by side.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the name of the game is Subway Rushers. If the name sounds familiar, that’s probably because the number 12 top free App on the US store is a game called Subway Surfers. Could the naming be purely coincidental…sure, but given the icons and the fact that I don’t see a single subway in any of the game’s screenshots, I’m gonna go with the customer confusion angle on this one.
Now to be fair, I have not played Subway Rushers, so I cannot comment on the actual gameplay. However, it appears to be an endless runner with some really decent looking graphics, so one has to wonder why the developer would stoop to such trickery to try to sell their app, rather than relying on the game’s merits.
