Chinese Developer Sells Fake (and Crappy) Line Camera Application in Apple App Store

VS Media is pointing out today that an imitation of NHN’s popular Line Camera photo app has appeared on Apple’s app store. Line Camera from Japan has skyrocketed to 10 million users at a rate faster than Instagram, and it’s not a total surprise that some weasel out there would try to exploit that. This new fake app, entitled ‘Line Camera*’ [1] differs from the original in two ways:

• It is a paid app, selling for 85 yen (or $0.99).
• It is shitty.

I have no intentions of buying/trying the app, but the screenshots indicate that it turns your photos into a really awful pencil rendition of the original. This is perhaps symbolic of the developer’s creative spirit. His name is listed as Lee Zhihong whose website (in Chinese) is at cartoonxiang.yolasite.com, which doesn’t have any identifying information.

Currently a search for Line Camera in the app store (see right) will give you both the original and this Chinese pretender which is using the same app icon that Line Camera used to have.

On a similar note, our readers may recall our story from last week about a Chinese “developer” who stole an entire Western-developed game engine and then sold it for half-price in China. After we reported on it, the copied game engine was soon taken offline and the thief apologized to the original developer.

In any case, it’s pretty discouraging to see incidents like these drag down others in the Chinese industry who are trying to succeed legitimately.

[Source: VSmedia.info (Japanese)]