Gameloft updates Tintin game after accidentally delivering 2D to devices

If you're like us, you may have jumped all over that Gameloft 99 cent deal over the past week, and if you're like us you may have noticed that the Tintin HD game wasn't so much HD as it was 16-bit. Don't get us wrong, the game was still quite fun, and since we hadn't paid the full $6.99 for the game, we didn't question it at first. But, it turns out that was definitely a mistake and one that Gameloft has corrected.

Gameloft updates Tintin game after accidentally delivering 2D to devices
The trouble was simple, the APK read the device data wrong on some handsets and tablets and delivered the 2D version of The Adventures of Tintin instead of the 3D version that was pictured in the Android Market. This caused a landslide of bad reviews for the game, and Gameloft acted pretty quickly to fix the problem, by pushing an update to the Android Market. Although, it should be noted that while Gameloft has fixed the issue for many devices, there are some that still haven't gotten the fix. Gameloft set up a list of devices that should have gotten the update.

If your device isn't on the list, Gameloft is issuing refunds to users. In case you uninstalled the game when having this problem, you can download it again from the Android Market, of course if you already got a refund, you will have to pay the full $6.99 for the game now that the sale is over.

Apple’s Internal Gamestore Testing App Turns Up In The App Store

As noted by German sites Flo's Weblog and iFun.de, a curious new iOS application that seems to be from Apple has appeared in the App Store. The new app, known as GameStore [App Store], debuted on December 31st and seems to be a test app of some sort, offering several racing-themed in-app purchases but without any actual functionality.

The app is priced at $0.99, with the three in-app purchases currently available through the app priced between $0.99 and $2.99. Additional in-app purchases shown in the single screenshot shown on the App Store page for GameStore show items as high as $26.99, but these other items are not currently visible in the app itself.

In-app purchases made through the app do go through and users' accounts are charged for them, but with no actual game supporting the content available, they have no functionality.

When the app's listing is viewed in the App Store from an iOS device, the posting date is listed as June 9, 2009, which was during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference just ahead of the public launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and the debut of in-app purchasing. Consequently, GameStore may simply be an internal testing app for the feature that was somehow accidentally published to the public App Store over the weekend.

Update: GameStore has now been removed from the App Store.

Update 2: TUAW's Erica Sadun took a closer look at the app from a developer's perspective, concluding that the app was likely sample code for an in-app purchasing developer test that somehow mistakenly got approved by Apple.

What developers do is upload a working skeleton application to iTunes Connect. You do this with the full understanding that you'll be replacing or, for tutorials, rejecting your binary at some point in the future. Once uploaded, you can test your IAPs, and make sure all your purchasing processes work. Looks like the app was submitted in order to provide a live testbed and may have gotten approved inadvertently.

After consulting with the TUAW team, our take on this is "likely sample code accidentally deployed to App Store" by Apple and then quickly pulled once people took notice. TUAW reached out directly to the developer we suspect was behind the app upload before it got pulled.

calling and texting app with the apple peel 520 installed: