Luftrausers clone "trying to steal money", says original dev

Luftrausers clone Skyfar has returned to the iOS App Store, in an apparent attempt to capitalise on the indie's tremendous success by deceiving users.

Skyfar originally turned up on the App Store in April last year, almost a full year before Luftrausers released, but there's not much doubt that it's a knock-off, enabled by Vlambeer's laudable of open development. At the time, Vlambeer managed to have the Rubiq Lab game removed, but it's apparently made its way back.

Speaking with GameInformer, Vlambeer's Rami Ismail said the clone isn't very good, and hopes to capitalise on Luftrauser's success.

"People are going to search for Luftrausers and they won’t find it on iOS because it doesn’t exist," he said.

"So [Rubiq Lab] put up a game with screenshots that look like Luftrausers and it actually is nothing like Luftrausers because if we could’ve done the game well on iOS, then we would’ve done it. There is no way to do Luftrausers properly on iOS because you need one button too many. [Rubiq Lab] is just trying to steal money, effectively, promising something that it is not."

No doubt the copycat was inspired by the way Luftrausers made back its development costs in just two days after it released on Linux, Mac, PC and the PlayStation Network last week.

Clones are a touchy subject for Vlambeer, as the tiny indie saw the excellent flash version Ridiculous Fishing cloned as a premium mobile app before it could port the title itself at much higher quality.