Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s Lawsuit May Change The Face of the iTunes App Store

Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s Lawsuit May Change The Face of the iTunes App Store

Let’s face it, the iTunes App Store is more of a wretched hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley ever was. As soon as a hit game comes out, a million other clone games come out right alongside it. Most of these clone games steal assets and barely even make an attempt to call themselves unique and individual products. Some try to market themselves as viable free alternatives to paid apps. Others are a little bit more egregious ripoffs.

This is the case with Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 , an unofficial “sequel” to the franchise found on the App store. Unlike the truly horrifying FNAF 4 that will release this Halloween (more on that later), this FNAF 4 was, essentially, just a reskin of FNAF made by a “Lazada Polodi.” Everything was simply recolored, but nothing else changed. Heck, the creator even copy pasted the original FNAF description text into their description box!

Meta Quest 3 128GB - Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle
  • 2x the graphic processing power of Quest 2 with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
  • Mixed reality blends virtual elements and physical space
  • 4K+ Infinite display
  • 3D audio with enhanced clarity and bass
  • Touch Plus controllers deliver a more intuitive experience
  • Library of over 500 titles
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

Of course, the app was eventually taken down, but not nearly fast enough. It made quite a bit of money, charging a ludicrous $9.99, while the original FNAF goes for $2.99. Obviously, it was meant as a quick cash grab, trying to profit off the Five Night’s at Freddy’s 4 hype, and it worked. One wonders why Apple even has a review team if they will continue to allow things like this to happen.

Luckily, Scott Cawthon is rolling in money after releasing FNAF 1 2 and 3 , and so he hired a legal team in order to make things right. Documents were filed at the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, asking the court to issue a subpoena that would compel Apple to disclose information about Lazada Polodi, the creator of the false FNAF 4 . This includes IP addresses and any other personal information, which of course can include banking information. Apple has until May 25 at 10 a.m. PT to challenge or comply with the subpoena.

Meta Quest 3 128GB - Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle
  • 2x the graphic processing power of Quest 2 with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
  • Mixed reality blends virtual elements and physical space
  • 4K+ Infinite display
  • 3D audio with enhanced clarity and bass
  • Touch Plus controllers deliver a more intuitive experience
  • Library of over 500 titles
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

If this subpoena works, then this sets a precedent that can allow developers everywhere to sue scammers that clone their works and release them on the App store.

Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s Lawsuit May Change The Face of the iTunes App Store

This case is a good example with the problems with copyright in today’s creative environment. If you are a small time programmer getting legitimately ripped off on the App store, you have to jump through a million hoops in order to bring the scammer to justice. However, if you are a Youtube creator, simply looking to make reviews or post Let’s Plays, your video could be taken down nearly instantaneously. The purpose of copyright is to protect the creative works of people in order to encourage people to create said works. However, in our current environment, it serves to discourage creative people legitimately making works under fair use, and encourage people to blatently copy paste a work in order to make a quick profit.

In short, we screwed up big time.

In better news, Scott Cawthon has just uploaded another teaser for Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 . This time, we see a demonic version of Bonnie with the text “was it me?” superimposed over it. Brightening the picture shows that A) the inside of Bonnie’s ears are purple, and B) there is “Nightmare” scrawled all over the picture in graffiti, once again reinforcing the nightmare motif.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 will release this Halloween.

Meta Quest 3 128GB - Asgard’s Wrath 2 Bundle
  • 2x the graphic processing power of Quest 2 with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
  • Mixed reality blends virtual elements and physical space
  • 4K+ Infinite display
  • 3D audio with enhanced clarity and bass
  • Touch Plus controllers deliver a more intuitive experience
  • Library of over 500 titles
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.
To top