Avoid This Awful Temple Run Ripoff And Get It Out Of The Top Free App Lists

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Can you tell which is which? Hint: the ripoff is on the left.
Can you tell which is which? Hint: the ripoff is on the left.

Temple Run is an original, popular, and successful game by Imangi Studios. It was picked up by Disney to become Temple Run: Brave, a tie-in to the Pixar/Disney flick of the same name. If you haven’t already downloaded it, do so now. We’ll wait.

Pyramid Run is a horrible rip off of Temple Run. Do not download it. I’m not even going to link to it, but the similarities are clear. It’s not even a careful attempt to re-skin or remix the original. It’s a blatant cash grab, as you can see when you read the predominance of one-star reviews.

Here’s a review by the Elves:

“The ads pop up while playing the game! The are right in the middle of the screen so that you cannot see past them to play. I did not see any way to disable them,no in app purchase or any other way. Until the ads are removed or are at least less distracting, only one star. I deleted the app after trying to play it five times and lost each time because of an ad.”

This is obviously a game created strictly to garner a ton of downloads, make a bunch of cash off of ads, and hopefully survive long enough in the app store to make it worth the developers time.

And another by DJC740v

Bad, bad, bad version of temple run!

See? The problem with a game like this is that it does indeed confuse users – the reviewer above compares it by name! Temple Run, the original game, has an aggregate 4.5 star rating, from over one million users. That’s high. Pyramid Run, the ripoff, has 3870 one star ratings, with a bit over 5600 reviews. That’s low.

So why is this the number one free app in the App Store? Because it looks like Temple Run, and it’s free. Why isn’t it taken down, yet? I’m not sure, but let’s hope that Imangi Studios, the developers of the original game, complain to Apple and that Apple takes it down. Let’s also be sure to tell all of our friends and relatives about this sort of ripoff app, and keep them from downloading it.

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