The mobile market is alive with arguments about the pros and cons of developers protecting their assets, but being too open also has its pitfalls.

That's a lesson Wolfire Games – creators of Mac App Store title Lugaru HD – has learned, with the developers' decision to make the game's source code public under general license in May resulting in its title being undercut by a cheaper clone.

The offending game – Lugaru from developer iCoder – costs $1.99 to Lugaru HD's $9.99, although iCoder believes it's doing nothing wrong.

The clone zone

"While we do understand [Wolfire's] regrets, this does not change the fact that we have every legal right to market and sell the software, and we feel that $1.99 is a fair price," Alex Matlin of iCoder told Kotaku.

"The license we were granted allows for non-exclusive redistribution of the source code or the compiled product, modified or unmodified, for a fee or free of charge."

Wolfire Games, as you might expect, begs to differ.

"We are not happy about this situation," said one of Lugaru HD's creators Jeffrey Rosen.

"It is not uncommon for people to sell pirated copies of our game, but we were completely caught off guard that Apple would approve this for sale on the App Store without any due diligence."

It would appear that, despite allowing the game onto the market in the first place, Apple has now taken Wolfire's side, with iCoder's Lugaru having disappeared from the Mac App Store since Kotaku's investigation.

[source: Kotaku]