The Brief Story of Cuphead’s Surprise iOS Release

If you were following anyone in the iOS gaming community this morning, you probably saw some interesting news: Cuphead was – apparently – released on the App Store.

Sadly, this was too good to be true. The release was a scam app. It re-used fake assets from the PC version of Cuphead, re-packaged them into a bundle that looked official, and slapped a $4.99 price tag on it. This was a sophisticated job, though – TouchArcade fell for it, and they’re usually good about spotting fakes.

Scam apps like this are nothing new – see the multitude of games called “Minecraft 2” that briefly climb the App Store charts before being pulled – but I’ve never seen a scam app release that looks this polished. The level of detail in the store description is superior to many real releases from major developers.

Be careful out there. For all the talk about App Store rejections, Apple doesn’t actually do much to police their store.