Make It Rain: The Love of Money soars to No.1 on iTunes
Money, greed, politics, and corruption are apparently appealing to mobile gamers -- at least in the US. A new app called Make It Rain: The Love of Money has gone viral in the past seven days -- hitting the top of iTunes' free charts -- without any promotion from the app's developers. They can't seem to figure it out."We don't know why it's only popular with Americans," Make It Rain lead developer Ari Kardasis said in a statement. "Maybe it's because we only have US currency, or maybe it's because Americans have a love-love relationship with money."Just seven days ago, Make It Rain hadn't even made the Top 200 apps, and now it appears gamers can't get enough. As of Tuesday, the app had nearly 1.9 million users who had played nearly 30 million sessions. The game was created by US-based indie mobile game company Space Inch, which also made Say the Same Thing and Disco Bees.Make It Rain isn't your typical cartoony game, its premise is for players to be as corrupt, crooked, and manipulative as possible in order to make beaucoup virtual money. The game's creators designed it to be a tongue-in-cheek satire about wealth obsession, but it appears to be striking a nerve with players.Related storiesThe search for an awesome Flappy Bird replacement2048 is the new Flappy Bird in so many waysCandy Crush: The one-hit wonder worth billions?"Make It Rain is a lot of fun to play on a superficial level," Space Inch CEO Josh Segall said. "But what makes it particularly fun for players is the concept: you only get insanely rich in the game if you get into insider trading, subprime mortgages, and bribing political officials." Segall is a criminal lawyer for his day job and he even once ran for Congress in 2008. He says that it's a bit unsettling that the game's highest selling in-app purchase is a FBI "bribe pack."The app makes money with ads and by selling virtual items like the FBI bribe pack, which costs 99 cents. For now, Make It Rain is played only with US dollars but the company plans to start adding Euros in the near future.Make It Rain's usage chart over the past month.Space Inch
