The initial sparks over alleged bot farming on Apple's App Store have died down, but there's still plenty of heat in the discussion.
Various of the big freemium publishers have been suggested as power users of such services; notably CrowdStar, something co-founder Suren Markosian quickly denied.
His dark materials
Talking to Glu Mobile CEO Niccolo De Masi last week, I discussed the issue, given Glu had also been suggested as a suspect.
De Masi laughed.
"We're the only mobile publisher which is compliant with SarbanesOxley [post-Enron US accounting rules]," he said.
"We're a very clean company, something that's slowed down our growth compared to others. And remember we followed Apple's rules over incentivised downloads."
Whiter than...
It's a strong response, but one that highlights how fluid the app store ecosystem is.
As previously referred to, before Apple acted against Tapjoy's (and others) mechanism of driving app and game downloads with in-game currency, it was a strong revenue stream for Glu.
As its financial figures demonstrated, it was generating around $3 million per quarter from the practise before stopping it on iOS.
Of course, it's still available on Android, although ironically download bots don't work well on Googles platform as its charts are generated by a combination of downloads, usage and uninstalls.
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Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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