Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Well, the way it works, you get an initial boom for your buck, and you get more eyes on your product during your launch week, which is your critical time to make an impression. If your game or app is shit and no one ever uses it again, that money spent on cheating is an immediate ROI, and drops off as soon as you stop promoting the app.

However, if your app is awesome, that initial burst of cheating allowed your game to push through the crowds of 50,000 other apps to get the eyeballs it needs. If it's a great app, those initial users who were suckered in by cheating the system, are now happy, satisfied customers telling their friends about your app. You don't need to game the system anymore: you've broken through the brick wall that is the first 10,000 or so sales. After that, you can rely on the quality of your game to win people over, but when you're naked, alone and review-less, the app store can be a terrifying and unfriendly place.



Interesting, how much does a successful app usually have to spend on fake reviews to have a shot?

The way you are describing it basically makes it sound like a hidden listing cost to be on the app store.

Eventually though people are simply going to stop believing reviews at which point Apple/Google will have to start taking some action against this.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: