Am I seeing corruption on Google Play? How's this possible – legal?

24 points

9 years ago

When I went to Google Play to check if our recently published game was in the subcategory Top New Releases of Games category, I entered some random games to see what's good about them. One that really caught my attention and shocked me is the Calculator: The Game by Simple Machines: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sm.calculateme

I'm not advertising them; I'm trying to understand how they got 844 ratings while Installs says: 10-50? Updated on July 13th and today is 16th, I'm sure the installs data and ratings is up to date for that date.

But how can they have so many ratings and only 50(max.) installs? As far as I know Google Play allows you to rate an app only when you have installed it. I can believe that it's possible to download and rate it without launching, but still looks strange to me to have that many ratings.

Are we seeing corruption? Have they agreed with Google somehow? Is this cheating?

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