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Opinion: Caveat emptor - beware misleading App Store listings!

How to protect yourself from bad game descriptions and screenshots on the App Store

Opinion: Caveat emptor - beware misleading App Store listings!
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A click here, a click there – it's so easy to purchase games on the App Store. Moreover, so many of the titles are cheap. A carefree spending spree on a few 99 cent/pence games is harmless enough, but add up days of inexpensive purchases and you find a whopping bill awaiting payment.

In clicking without care, we forget to remember the most basic of consumer tenets: buyer beware. While a 99 cent game may not justify the same scrutiny as plunking down payment for a new car, the need to protect your wallet is still important.

Clearly price is no indication of quality but this piece focuses on the fact that there are developers attempting to pull the wool over your eyes with misleading screenshots, useless imagery, and deceptive descriptions under the pretence that their games only cost a measly 99 cents (in some instances, much more).

But that's how all schemes begin: nickels and dimes are the road to riches for those who seek to boost sales of products not worth buying in the first place. After all, Charles Ponzi made millions scheming postage coupons.

Unless you're a total sap, you're unlikely to buy into something spendy. Eight people fell for Armin Heinrich's I Am Rich application last August, earning a collective raised eyebrow from the world. Who would be foolish enough to drop $999.99 on something that stupid?

Adjust the price to 99 cents, though, and suddenly it's okay to buy a worthless piece of software. Thousands will buy junk at 99 cents and not complain.

Junk is junk no matter what the price and there's plenty of it on the App Store. With the world economy teetering on the edge of depression, every cent matters and you shouldn't shrug off a wasteful purchase.

It's a particularly salient point when you consider the tools at your disposal on the App Store for determining the actual value of a game. Screenshots, full description, and user reviews all provide insight on whether a game is worth buying – yet, many of us are ignoring these signs.

Take Dusktreaders, for example. Up until the game's most recent update, the screenshots posted on the App Store were a complete misrepresentation, depicting a much better looking game than was actually available.

By the developer's own admission, the screenshots were not from the publicly available version of the game. This is a huge red flag. Upon review, our suspicions were confirmed: Dusktreaders is a pile.

At least Granite Games, the developer, admitted the discrepancy. Other developers aren't that kind.

The sole screenshot posted for WhakaPal shows a half-block of text that appears to be scrolling up the screen. Developer Thomas Kilmer asks, "For only $99, is it not worth it to WhakaPal?" If the nondescript screenshot is any indication, no, it is definitely not worth my money.

Add Can't Tap This and Stress Man to that list. Those games have similarly useless screenshots posted on the App Store.

The menu screenshots for Can't Tap This are pointless because menus don't tell you anything about how the game plays.

Stress Man isn't any better, putting a poorly-drawn doodle of a scruffy man on its App Store page. I'm stressing, man, just thinking of how many people have wasted 99 cents on that.

Which highlights another issue with App Store listings: poor descriptions. When the screenshots given you little or no insight on a game, the descriptive copy becomes your only other tool for discerning what it's about.

Stress Man's description is tellingly vague.

"Had a bad day? Need someone to push around to relieve the stress?

This application is the perfect solution. It is the equivalent of a mobile stress toy that you can punch and push around. The head whips around with sound and taunts you."

Others, like Facix Cubix, provide a decent explanation of gameplay but make unreasonable claims.

"Facix Cubix is not like any other puzzle game on the App Store," writes iTech Development Systems of its own game. That's a questionable assertion. I'm fairly confident there might be one, maybe two other match-three puzzlers for iPhone. Actually, the listing for Facix Cubix draws a list of similar games for us! "Recommended for fans of puzzles [sic] games such as: Tetris, Topple, Bejeweled 2, Collapse! Chaos and reMovem." Congratulations iTech Development Systems, you just matched five similar games and cleared your argument from the screen.

Solus Games is even worse, claiming its PocketSports Football is "the only football game for iPhone and iPod Touch." Totally, completely, utterly false. Try LED Football and its sequel.

Notice the common bond among these games: they all share in a lack of quality, none are worth the money they ask of you. The fact that the descriptions and screenshots are bad show that. Don't allow the 99 cent price tag to convince you to part with your money. Doing so only validates this sort of business and encourages more of the same to appear on the App Store. Use these indicators as a guide for purchases (as well as our reviews, obviously) to protect your wallet because when it comes down to it, you're the only one who's going to.

Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.