The creator of the horror game Poppy Playtime is suing Google for refusing to remove scam apps that pretend to be real and then charge users up to $95 for literally nothing
Mob Entertainment, the studio behind the popular Five Nights at Freddy’s-like game Poppy Playtime, has filed a lawsuit against Google for failing to remove fraudulent Poppy Playtime apps from its Android Play Store, Polygon and TorrentFreak are reporting.
At first glance I assumed it had to do with those weird fake games you see advertised all over YouTube and Twitter, but it’s even worse: the company in question, Daigo Game 2020, has products on the Play Store literally titled “Mac Playtime Chapter 4” and “Poppy Playtime: Chapter 3”. At the time of writing, these apps are still available for download. Daigo Game 2020’s previous works, including “Minecraft 2020” and a selection of similar unlicensed Skibidi Toilet games, have unsurprisingly been removed from the store.
False Macs have a staggering 1.1 million downloads. The apps are free, a sort of too-good-to-be-true temptation likely aimed at younger, less savvy Poppy Playtime fans. Like FNAF before it, Poppy Playtime strikes me as one of those little cousin-nephew phenomena, and Mob Entertainment boasts a staggering 40 million players of its games across all platforms. After downloading the fake apps, users are asked to pay between $30 and $30. US$95 To access the “game,” according to the lawsuit, you will receive nothing more than “a link to a dead web page.”
Mob Entertainment reports that Google removed the imposter apps following inquiries and a DMCA, but was surprised to reinstate them a few days later. Mob Entertainment is this time demanding that the apps be truly removed, as well as $150,000 in compensation for each of them.
I know Google is a huge company in which YouTube and the Play Store probably exist separately from each other, but this completely baffling unforced error becomes even more absurd when you consider how aggressive Google is about copyright infringement in others company initiatives. Stories of YouTubers being riddled with fraudulent or frivolous copyright claims are quite common, and Nintendo has even used this system to target channels showcasing emulators. The situation with Daigo Game 2020 is definitely No that, and it’s surprising that this company was even allowed to continue uploading to the app store after its Minecraft and Skibidi projects.