Unofficial Minecraft for iPhone released, pulled, 'wasn't intended to go live yet'

An iPhone edition of ultra-popular indie game Minecraft was released on the App Store recently, but quickly pulled down, allegedly by the game’s creator.

If you’ve never played Minecraft, it’s all about surviving in a hostile wasteland by attacking monsters, harvesting raw materials, and building a shelter from rocks. Then, when that’s all done and dusted, you can set about making a gigantic replica of the Starship Enterprise or a working computer.

It’s popular and addictive stuff, so the craft-obsessive openly welcomed the 59p / 99c / €0.79c Minecrafted app for iPhone and iPod touch. It let you play in your kingdom and create craft-art on the go, allegedly without any code from the original game.

But the creators of the PC game, who make a cool $250,000 a day from the hit title, weren’t so pleased. “There is no official iPhone or Android Minecraft yet,” tweeted Markus 'Notch' Persson, the swedish developer of Minecraft. “If you're working on a clone, that's cool, but please don't imply it's ours.”

While one would assume the app was pulled from iTunes for copyright infringement, the developer said otherwise on Twitter. “I removed it myself because it wasn't intended to go live yet,” said Trevor Wilkin, Minecrafted’s developer.

He says he wanted to get in contact with the official team before the app went gold, but an incorrect release date had the download pop up on iTunes before he was ready.

We’ll let you know if it ever comes back to the App Store.