'Unpacking' Clone Removed From iOS And Google Play Stores

Indie developer Witch Beam's Unpacking was a real surprise hit on the gaming scene in 2021. A wonderfully tactile and zen-like puzzler, it combines a thoughtful story with relaxed and creative gameplay. It is, in short, a great little game you should really check out ASAP on Xbox Game Pass if you've yet to do so.

However, earlier today Witch Beam had to take to social media via the game's official Twitter account to announce that a cheap "ad-riddled" knock-off was doing big business on both the iOS app store and Google Play store.

The rip-off, very cheekily titled "Unpacking Master", looked identical to Witch Beam's game in screenshots provided by the dev on Twitter.

Witch Beam went on to say they've obviously had plenty of cheap imitations of their game in the past few months, it's just part of the biz nowadays, but that this one has been particularly awful because it's had a ton of advertising on both Instagram and Tiktok and was being downloaded at an astonishing rate. They also mentioned that the success of this type of lazy, quick and cheap knock-off really does, understandably, affect them deeply;

It's been a horrible situation for such a small team for sure but, thankfully, it does appear as though there's light at the end of the tunnel here as the clone has now been removed from both the iOS app store and Google Play, where it was sat at #1 and #3 in the free games charts respectively.

It's great to see that so many fans of Witch Beam's game helped support the developer and took to the various app stores to file a copycat complaint in order to flag the problem up to both Apple and Google, and the team even took to Twitter once more this morning to thank everyone for their help;

What do you make of these free to play clones and the speed at which they pop up on mobile stores? What should be done to stop them from hurting and blatantly profiting from indie devs like this? Let us know in the comments.

[source twitter.com]