14 DAY TRIAL // Swing Copters, a game from the developer of Flappy Bird, benefited from plenty of popularity even before it was added to Google Play, as crooks hurried to flood the marketplace with scammy versions.
Dong Ngyuen, creator of Flappy Bird, decided to release a new game, but at the time of the launch, the original piece came 63rd in the search results when looking for it by name, all the other spots being occupied by fake versions.
As soon as they learned of the new endeavor of the developer, crooks hurried to pollute Google’s marketplace with their own versions. Google took care of the matter and cleaned up the place, leaving Swing Copters its deserved first place in search results.
The fake variants were not carrying malware, since Google Play is quite efficiently curated in this sense, but they were rip-offs of the original, and in some of the cases installing them required a purchase. Duping customers into paying up is actually the endgame of the scammers.
Piggybacking on the fame of a game or a developer is not an unusual practice as crooks always try to make some money with as little effort as possible.
In the case of Flappy Bird, the developer removing the app from the stores was probably the best thing that happened to cybercriminals, who had a huge opportunity to deceive unsuspecting users into installing their apps, claiming to be unofficial versions of the original.
Despite being extremely simple, graphic-wise, Flappy Bird enjoyed an extraordinary success, Ngyuen’s earnings being estimated at one point at $50,000 / €38,000 per day.
The Vietnamese indie game maker pulled the plug on the game in a Twitter announcement, saying that he could not take it anymore; the frenzy around the game was so big that even death threats were made.
Flappy Bird popularity was probably owed in part to the fact that it was extremely difficult to play, with diehard gamers failing miserably after just a few stages.
It appears that the same tactic has been preserved in Swing Copters, where gamers have to direct a helicopter through swinging hammers.
According to reviews of the game, Swing Copters is much more difficult to play, to the frustration of most players.
At the moment, Google Play contains similar games that have either “Swing” in their name or “Copter,” and the combinations can be quite hilarious, such as Chicken Copter, Obama Copter.