There’s an old saying about a sucker being born every minute. If you need proof, you only have to look as far as the App Store, where Minecraft Pocket Edition 2 recently stormed into the top 5.
What’s that, you say? You don’t remember hearing anything from Mojang or Microsoft about an all-new mobile Minecraft game being released? That’s because they didn’t release one. No, Minecraft Pocket Edition 2 was just another scammy app uploaded to the app store by someone looking to make a quick buck, and $10.99 less Apple’s cut, it probably wound up being quite a few quick bucks. Lots of times apps with scam-riffic names get bounced at the door. Sometimes they get discovered shortly after being approved and are unceremoniously yanked.
Minecraft Pocket Edition 2 managed to stick around in the App Store for several weeks — long enough to fool enough Minecraft-crazed iOS users into installing it that it climbed all the way up Apple’s charts to the number four spot. Apparently someone finally clued in to the fact that PE2 wasn’t an official release.
The app’s name wasn’t the only clue it was bogus. The developer’s name was also pretty suspicious: Scott Cawthorn. It’s only one letter away from being Scott Cawthon, who is far too busy printing money with his Five Nights at Freddy’s games (and donating to charities) to bother building a Minecraft ripoff. Still, you put the right name on an app and slap a familiar-looking dev on it and you’re going to fill your trap pretty fast.
Eurogamer figures they know the real name of the guy behind PE2. Ironically enough, they found his name — Viktor Todorov — on the game’s copyright screen.