This is how bad the new app store is: I search for "Carmageddon". Result #1 is an app called "Armageddon". Result #2 is "Carmageddon". In what search algorithm does a direct title hit not make that the first result?

It's rough, because when you do have direct match searches come in first, you get apps trying to name themselves directly after the search.

FLASHLIGHT PRO

GAMES: The best card game ever.

FOO: The Barrest blah blah.

Doing it this way discourages SEO-naming. I don't know if that's why Apple does it this way, but it's a nice side effect

Result number 4 for me, after Armageddon Racing, Omega Drive, and Worms 2: Armageddon

Result #1 for me in the UK, with the obvious rip-off, Amargeddon, at #2.

Just searched for it myself in the UK, Armageddon came up first.

Top row. Middle tile. Search results are not indexed so top row, middle tile could actually be the top result?

On iPhone, it's indexed. #4 for me. Four painstakingly slow swipes to the right.

My friends and I used to LAN play the crap out of this game in the MacOS8/9 days. It was a lot of fun, but networking bugs would cause all connected computers to hard crash, needing restarts.

It's always surprising to me when developers give away their product for free when they launch. Seems like creating some buildup before the release by getting the game into reviewers' hands would be a better solution.

When I see a deal like this, I'll go ahead and grab the app even if I have no intention of playing it. If they launched with a discounted price and I saw a number of positive reviews, I would be more likely to buy the game to check it out.

Yeah, but you have to know first that the app exists. This way, they're using the downloads to reach the top of the app sales/downloads list. Probably, most of the people that are looking for free apps, aren't going to purchase anything, so they're not lost sales but good PR.

I wonder what happens if they change from free to paid, do they stay on the most downloaded paid apps list or the stats reset...

They're doing it as a promotional thing, as they're working on a new version of Carmageddon right now.

They've emailed kickstarter backers 2 or 3 times letting us know this was going on. Kind of a customer loyalty bonus as well.

A fantastically naughty game from the days of yore. The iOS version is a surprisingly good port, but lacks multiplayer.

Epic game. I remembered the discussion about ban the game or replace the humans with zombies or something on version 2.

They did that with 1 in Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon#Controversy

Epic game. I used to play the trial version on my PC with my friends. Golden.