Doomsday arrives early for Swing Copter clones as Google cleans up the Play Store
Yesterday we reported on the launch of Swing Copters and all the clones that arrived as a result. A herd of developers thought it’d be a good idea to try and cash in on Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen’s latest hit by blatantly ripping off its name, assets and gameplay mechanics. We imagined it would be tough for those clones to survive with the handy trademark Nguyen secured for his title, and it seems that assumption was spot on.
If you search for Swing Copters in the Google Play Store right now, there’s nary a clone to be found. Google has scrubbed their apps marketplace clean of anything that could cause trouble in the courtrooms. The search results have changed drastically in just 24 hours. We’ve gone from this:
To this:
Seems those developers’ time would have been better spent brainstorming original games that could potentially find their own avenue of success. That doesn’t mean all clones are gone. Games with different titles and graphics, but identical concepts and gameplay mechanics, still appear to be sitting in the Google Play Store.
We imagine Google can’t do much about it if the copycats aren’t technically stealing assets and using trademarked names, but it’s nice to know that folks won’t be accidentally downloading a cloned, and potentially dangerous, version of the real deal. It should be quite easy to find the original Swing Copters now, and should you fancy some of the other games “based on” Swing Copters, those are just as readily available.