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Comment by darkslave | Hacker News Reader

Potatoss.com all of the games, you can find them in the AppStore. I made it with a friend a couple of months ago, it did like 250k downloads but anyway we couldn't fight against huge companies like disney or rovio, there is too many bad things happening under the hood of the AppStore. Specially what some companies call a burst... did you know that some Chinese companies who will download your games millions of time for money? The apps were made with cocos2d and Chipmunk for the physics engine.

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Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine. While I do think many game developers on the App Store resort to shady tactics, I think it's a poor excuse to not succeed.

Looking at your game on iTunes, it strikes me that you have a lot of bad reviews, so perhaps there are things to work on in your gameplay, before you start worrying if your competitors are cheating.

Also, looks to me like your game was downloaded by a lot of South Americans. Maybe if your game was more fun, or marketed better, in Europe and the US, there would have been more in-app-purchases. 250K downloads is worth different amounts in different places.

Not to say making an indie game isn't a hard journey, but to say you failed because everyone else cheats is self-defeating. You probably fail because you perceive no way to succeed.

I never say we fail...it's been an awesome journey. For a couple of guys in Costa Rica, this are things that nobody else had ever done. Building that game was the best thing I did, period. http://www.dreamitventures.com/portfolio_companies/sabor-stu... http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/08/pota-toss/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/293831888/pota-toss-amaz... https://www.parse.com/customers/case_study/potatoss http://thenextweb.com/la/2012/08/22/pota-toss-launches-beta-...

It seems like a great accomplishment, and I respect that. But if your takeaway was that it's too hard to compete with the cheaters, I'm not sure that was the right lesson to learn. Maybe I just don't understand that dark depths of the game market.

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