14 DAY TRIAL // After Flappy Bird hit Top 10 in the AppStore, clones started to appear immediately. As expected, Apple got rid of some of them because they were infringing the copy right with their names or graphics.
Now it seems that the same developer is doing something similar. Open Name, a small, independent studio specialized in game development is accusing Vietnamese-based developer Dong Nguyen that he copied their game idea.
In an email sent to the tech bloggers community, Victoria Arnold from Open Name explains how their game, "Bog Racer" was released a full month before Swing Copters. They have been working on the graphics, idea and promotion for this app over four months and all of their money went into advertising for Bog Racer. The app was released at the same time on Google Play, Amazon App Store and the Windows Phone Store.
However, less than a month later Dong Nguyen announced his new game and then he released it for iOS. The two games have a different idea, but the mechanics look exactly the same. Bog Racer has the player drive a small car over bridges, while Swing Copters will fly a helicopter upwards through some moving platforms.
Readers of the popular TouchArcade magazine have immediately noticed the similarities. Now the guys over at Open Name say there's no way for them to recover their investment because Swing Copters is in the Top 10 apps Chart of the AppStore, while their less known but original app is nowhere in the first few hundreds apps.
The developers of Bog Racer say they will appeal the AppStore editors and ask for the removal of Swing Copters. However, they admit their chances of getting the new game removed are pretty slim.
Both Swing Copters and Bog Racer are free games and the developers make their money off of the banners included in the apps. While Dong Nguyen is asking for a $0.99 (€0.75) in-app purchase to remove the ads, Open Name does not. The Vietnamese developer has not responded to these allegations so far.
Dong Nguyen is the developer of the world-wide sensation, Flappy Bird. This side-scrolling format game with 2D retro graphics had huge success in the AppStore a year ago. The developer's story was even more impressive. At 19 he was studying at the local university and he won an internship at Punch Entertainment, one of the few video game companies in his country. Flappy Bird was so popular that the developer was making around $50,000 (€37,870) a day in revenue from advertising alone. Five months after its release, the game was taken out of the AppStore for no apparent reason.
Check out the videos for Bog Racer and Swing Copters and tell us what you think in the comments box.
