Somebody Created A Fake Cuphead And Sold It On The App Store

If you ever wanted to play Cuphead on your mobile device, there was a brief window over the weekend where you could do exactly that. The only problem is that the game was actually an impostor that scammed folks out of five bucks and, you know, blatantly ripped off somebody else's intellectual property.

As Business Insider is reporting, a game called Cuphead popped up on iTunes recently. As far as fakes go, this one was apparently really convincing. The icon for the game looked legit, the screenshots looked like they were pulled directly from the popular indie title and the developer was listed as "StudioMDHR Entertainment Inc."

Once the folks at the real StudioMDHR (Note the lack of "Entertainment Inc.") got word that the game existed, they had to scramble to get Apple to remove it from their marketplace. One of the craziest parts is that the game apparently actually worked. The original report states that the game's look was a bit off but, otherwise, you could actually play it. Apparently, the animations weren't much to look at, either.

Still, this kind of stuff happens all the time and, according to real StudioMDHR co-founder Chad Moldenhauer, this is only the latest imposter the team has had to get Apple to squash. That's extra frustrating if you think about the fact that this is coming from a small indie studio. Rather than working on patches for the real Cuphead or plugging away at whatever comes next for the studio, they've got to spend time and resources double checking Apple's work in order to protect themselves and gamers who, not knowing any better, forked over cash for a game they thought was legit. As Moldenhauer points out, there's the added danger that these fake games might be malicious in design, too, so there's no telling what they might be doing to your iPhone when they aren't being properly checked.

If you've ever spent a bit of time on the iOS storefront, though, you likely know that this isn't exactly a new occurrence. Fraudulent games pop up all of the time and, while we'll at least admit that this Cuphead fake was super convincing, more time and care needs to go into making sure these types of situations stop occurring on a constant basis. We realize the workload to properly authenticate these games would be massive, but we have a funny feeling that Apple can afford to protect the legitimate developers who are making legitimate games for their service. Instead, they simply allow stuff like this to get through and leave it up to the developers to track down phonies and report them. It's a backwards process that's long overdue for an overhaul.

But barring that, come on, Apple. This is one of thebiggest games of 2017 and you still got duped? That fact alone should prove you've got some processes that need tuning in a major way.