As reported by Polygon and TorrentFreak, Mob Entertainment, the studio behind widespread Five Nights at Freddy’s-alike Poppy Playtime, has filed a lawsuit in opposition to Google for failing to take away fraudulent Poppy Playtime apps from its Android Play Store.
At first blush, I assumed this needed to do with these bizarre pretend video games whose advertisements you see throughout YouTube and Twitter, but it surely’s someway even worse than that: The outfit in query, Daigo Game 2020, has merchandise on the Play Store actually titled “Poppy Playtime Chapter 4” and “Poppy Playtime: Chapter 3.” At the time of writing, these apps are nonetheless out there for obtain. Daigo Game 2020’s earlier works, together with “Minecraft 2020” and a sampling of equally unlicensed Skibidi Toilet video games, have unsurprisingly been faraway from the shop.
The false Poppies have a staggering 1.1 million downloads between the 2 of them. The apps are free, a kind of “too good to be true” temptation doubtless concentrating on Poppy Playtime’s youthful and fewer savvy followers. Like FNAF earlier than it, Poppy Playtime strikes me as a kind of little cousin/nephew phenomena, and Mob Entertainment boasts a mind-boggling 40 million gamers of its video games throughout all platforms. After downloading the pretend apps, customers are prompted to pay between $30 and $95 to entry the “recreation,” with the cost netting you nothing greater than a “hyperlink to a lifeless webpage” in line with the lawsuit.
Mob Entertainment says Google took the imposter apps down after inquiries and a DMCA request, solely to bafflingly reinstate them days later. Mob Entertainment is asking for the apps to be taken down for actual this time, in addition to $150,000 in damages for every one.
I do know that Google is a gigantic firm, with YouTube and the Play Store doubtless present in their very own silos, however this totally confounding unforced error is just extra absurd when you think about how aggressive Google is about copyright takedowns within the firm’s different initiatives. Stories of YouTubers dinged with fraudulent or frivolous copyright claims are fairly frequent, and Nintendo has even used this method to focus on channels that exhibit emulators. The Daigo Game 2020 state of affairs is decidedly not that, and it is a surprise the outfit was even allowed to proceed importing to the app retailer after its Minecraft and Skibidi-related ventures.
