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Speaking to FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra, Codeminion developer Maciej Biedrzycki says he is “still looking” for a way to bring the popular color-matching puzzler StoneLoops! of Jurassica back to the App Store following its removal in October.
Apple removed StoneLoops at the request of Luxor developer MumboJumbo, who allegedly accused Codeminion of “infringing Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code” — charges that Codeminion denies.
Biedrzycki noted similarities between the StoneLoops situation and Apple’s recent decision to remove the multi-function utility application AppVault from the App Store. According to AppVault developer Ray Wenderlich, AppVault was taken down after a copyright infringement claim from a competing application, AppBox.
In a detailed comparison, however, Wenderlich argues that AppVault bears little visual resemblance to AppBox, and claims that his own effort is far superior to the competition. The copyright infringement claim only surfaced after AppVault surpassed AppBox in Apple’s sales charts.
Despite Wenderlich’s protests, however, Apple has yet to issue a response or provide recourse. Wenderlich has since started a petition to encourage open competition in the App Store.
“The authors of AppVault are running a petition trying to convince Apple to change their policy which clearly allows abuse and unfair competition,” said StoneLoops developer Maciej Biedrzycki. “Of course we’re supporting the petition, as we are still looking for a way to bring StoneLoops! back to the AppStore.”
… apparently Codeminion forgot to steal the section of Luxor code that makes it one of the buggiest apps on the AppStore.
Is there anything stopping Codeminion from filing the exact same complaint against MumboJumbo and having their app removed as well? (Besides common decency of course)