An App Store Battle: Ridiculous Fishing Gets A Blatant Copy, Ninja Fishing

Recently a developer, Vlambeer claimed that another developer’s iOS game in the making, Gamenauts’ Ninja onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.huntandfishfinders.com');" target="_blank" title="Fishing" href="http://www.huntandfishfinders.com">Fishing, was a copy of their original fishing title. That so called “ripoff” rolled onto the App Store just a few days ago, while Vlambeer’s official title is still in the making for iOS as a revamped, more modern version of the classic.

If a game has not yet been released, how could Vlambeer have claimed the rights to the idea? They have previously released a game, that predates Ninja Fishing’s existence by at-least a year, dubbed Radical Fishing. See the two trailers for the games:

Radical Fishing/> src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/15297796?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0">

onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/vimeo.com/15297796');" target="_blank" href="http://vimeo.com/15297796">Radical Fishing – Teaser from onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/vimeo.com/vlambeer');" target="_blank" href="http://vimeo.com/vlambeer">Vlambeer on onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/vimeo.com');" target="_blank" href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo.

Now take a look at Ninja Fishing’s trailer:/> width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fn6Ky0JMt8Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

See how similar the two titles are? Just a bit after the claim was made on Vlambeer’s part, they also revealed an iOS version of Radical Fishing, entitled Ridiculous Fishing that they had been working on secretly.

From a gamer’s perspective, with absolutely no sympathy involved whatsoever, I’d say this copycat that has recently been released on the App Store is good for the success of Ridiculous Fishing. Vlambeer will have to improve their game much more to entice potential buyers to buy their game rather than Ninja Fishing. They’ve got to put in some sort of irresistible allure, some feature that blows the pants off of Gamenaut’s copy, because Ninja Fishing is currently rocking the house; it’s, in other words, incredibly fun.

It’s kind of sad to see developers be robbed of their games almost entirely. Save for the fact that the names differ, the two applications are almost the same exact thing. We’ve previously seen things like this happen, in the form of either a flash version of a game being ported over to iOS by someone other than the official developer, or a develop hoping to feed off of another application’s success by releasing their own application with an all-too similar name of gameplay premise. A few examples are The Blocks Cometh, Tiny Skater and Super Mega Worm. It’s like piracy – you can’t stop it.

If you have already bought Ninja Fishing, which many people already have, and are liking it, please remember to also try and purchase Vlambeer’s Ridiculous Fishing when it launches in the future. It’s seeming like it’s going to be an awesome game, kudos to the artwork that is shown in the following pictures:/>

Click for full size and to see full detail/> href="http://www.iphonealley.com/news/an-app-store-battle-ridiculous-fishing-gets-a-blatant-copy-ninja-fishing/attachment/fishing" rel="attachment wp-att-21406">src="http://www.iphonealley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/fishing-225x300.png" alt="" title="fishing" width="225" height="300" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-21406" />href="http://www.iphonealley.com/news/an-app-store-battle-ridiculous-fishing-gets-a-blatant-copy-ninja-fishing/attachment/fishing2" rel="attachment wp-att-21407">src="http://www.iphonealley.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/fishing2-225x300.png" alt="" title="fishing2" width="225" height="300" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-21407" />