Jeez, why wouldn't he just give it its own name and graphics, and call it a clone? Would have been perfectly legal, and brought almost as much attention.

This may just be a thin client for the multiplayer version of Minecraft, meaning it would talk to a Minecraft server but not actually simulate the world itself.

Can anyone clear this up?

The discussion on Reddit mentioned that it's a client for a Minecraft server's "Creative" mode (free-form building). This is the mode that is playable in-browser and lacks a lot of the world modelling that is available in the regular game mode.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/e5y6i/im_outraged...

Presumably this infringes on notch's trademark rights, no?

On his site he mentions:

Coming soon? This doesn't really need an introduction... but it probably needs permission. I wasn't intending it to go live before I'd heard back from Notch.

http://mindvirusgames.com/products.php

Probably. With any luck, notch will just acquire the developer.

I think that scenario would work out if:

- Notch is not too busy. At least not too busy to temporarily shift his focus to supporting an iPhone version.

- He was disappointed that the game wasn't growing fast enough, not being on the iPhone.

- He's delighted to see other folks cloning his game.

- He doesn't want to wait a few weeks for @minecraftapp to release theirs.

- He's happy to do what he needs to in order to make an international business transaction work out.

- He didn't really have the money or game industry connections to contract with someone to make a really good iPhone version anyway.

So I'm thinking that would require a lot of luck.

Markus has shown a strong unwillingness to work with people outside of Sweden.

Conveniently, Notch has quite a bit of dough with which to bring out the lawyers, if it comes to that.

Why on earth would Notch acquire him?

Save him some work and prevent him from having to spend time learning Cocoa Touch instead of working on the desktop client and server? Sometimes it's better to embrace passion than to hit the auto-lawsuit button.

The downside is that if this app is terrible it makes him look bad. If he buys this guy's app then it's yet another thing he has to support.

Already looking bad, considering some of the apps up on the right hand bar. I got "Charlie bit me 3.0", "Snail race" and "Who threw poo".

Unless this is some sort of cunning parody site...

App Shopper is an App Store price monitor site. Developer's site can be found at: http://mindvirusgames.com/

Doesnt seem legit - some of the screenshots use the default theme, and at least a couple others use the Doku theme.

Has anyone actually tried the app to see what the quality is like?

-Doug

That's what I'm waiting to hear about. Clicking the "Buy Now" link gives me the following: "The item you've requested is not currently available in the US store."