Shady developers stealing assets from other developers and selling them on the iOS App Store isn't a new phenomenon. But what if that same thing happened on the Mac App Store, and instead of just repackaging certain assets, the shady developer ripped off the entire app and sold it for cheap, keeping the profits for himself? That's what those behind a game called Lugaru HD, Wolfire Games, are saying has happened to them, and so far, Apple has done little to help.

Lugaru HD is a combat game involving a "rebel bunny rabbit" that is on a mission to exact revenge on those who slaughtered his village. The app is available through Steam for both Mac and PC, but recently joined the Mac App Store at $9.99 per download. Shortly thereafter, another company going by "iCoder" uploaded an identical version of the game—this time named Lugaru—and priced it at $1.99. Since the games are otherwise identical and there's no indication that it was ripped off, it's easy to see how regular users would choose to pay for the cheaper, counterfeit option.

"While piracy is a fact of life for all game developers, this Mac app store scam is a different beast entirely. Apple is billing the Mac App Store as the place to buy Mac software. It is auto-installed in your dock. It is listed in the Apple menu," the Wolfire team wrote on the company blog. "We expect pirated copies of games to be available in shady corners of the internet, but not in well-known digital distribution channels with famously long review processes."

The Wolfire team told Ars that they contacted Apple on January 31, but did not hear back until today (February 3) when Apple told them that they had "contacted the developer of the application." Wolfire developer Jeff Rosen told Ars that he hopes that Apple will remove the ripped-off version of the app soon, but "even if they removed it tomorrow, I would be still be unsatisfied."

Rosen went on to point out that Wolfire is a visible gaming company with lots of support from both inside and outside Apple, but smaller developers likely wouldn't be so lucky if put in the same situation. "I wouldn't be surprised if there are many counterfeit apps lurking on the Mac App Store, perhaps under different names," Rosen told Ars. "The [counterfeit] developers are slowly collecting money, with Apple taking their 30 percent cut."

Indeed, it's off-putting that such an obvious ripoff would be able to make its way through Apple's supposedly vigorous review process without any flags being raised. The only mechanism for addressing this kind of copying is for developers to contact Apple on a per-incident basis and wait for a resolution.

iCoder, for its part, has remained mostly silent about the issue aside from a cryptic comment to Kotaku. "While we do understand [Wolfire's] regrets, this does not change the fact that we have every legal right to market and sell the software," iCoder's Alex Matlin said.

Wolfire believes Matlin is referring to the GPL nature of the apps packaged in the recent Humble Indie Bundle, resulting in Lugaru HD's source code being published. "[T]he license made it very clear that the authors retained all rights to the assets, characters, and everything else aside from the code itself," the company wrote. "It's as legal for them to sell Lugaru as it would be for them to sell Quake 3, Marathon, Aquaria, or Arx Fatalis. That is to say, it is completely illegal."