Catching cheaters by scrolling through someone's phone: a detective game a Frenchman made popular spawned a dozen-plus copycats in six months

Leaked is a detective game where you dig through a fictional phone and catch a cheater from the chat logs. It launched in August and by early November had reached the top 100 of entertainment charts in a dozen-plus small European countries. It has no gameplay of its own; the whole thing is lifted from Stalkie, which went viral in January. It got where it is through frequent TikTok posting and broad language coverage. The demand for this category is real, but too many people have crowded in.

"Paywall at question 6, with the storyline straight from Stalkie"

In Sep 2026 9, an American player gave Leaked 5 stars on the App Store: "I've basically spent my whole life catching 'betrayal' on Instagram 😂 Now someone finally made a game just for that."

Six weeks later, in Oct 21, another player gave 1 stars with a single line: "It makes you pay by question 6, and the storyline is straight-up stolen from Stalkie."

These two reviews pretty much sum it up. The first is the hook: a woman snooping through someone's phone to expose a cheater, something many people feel they do every day. The second is where it came from and how it charges: the mechanics are copied, and the paywall is hard.

What it is

Open Leaked and you get a stranger's phone, with chats, photo albums, social apps, notes, and call logs. As you scroll, you answer questions like where he was that night and who the person in the photo is, cracking the case step by step. The store description literally says "Uncover hidden relationships and investigate infidelity."

Free to download. Around the point where you've finished the first case (question 6 or so), a subscription pops up: weekly $4.99–9.99, monthly $9.99, yearly $19.99–39.99 (from the App Store in-app purchase list). The developer is an individual account named Siarhei Ivaneichyk, and the website is registered to a company called KOJIMAI STUDIO, which also makes small products like a car-head-unit widget and an affirmations app.

How directly did it copy? The bundle ID is com.stalker.detective. The privacy policy is titled "Stalkie Detective — Privacy Policy" and the body reads "Stalkie, a mobile application published by Siarhei Ivaneichyk". So during development it was even called Stalkie, and the name was only changed to Leaked around launch.

Who it copied from

The original Stalkie · Mobile Detective was made by French developer Gregoire Collin and launched in Jan 2026 13. It took off on TikTok through creators and ordinary users: several videos under #stalkie hit 800K to 12M views, and the official @stalkie_en account has one video at 12.1M. The US store has 2,917 ratings, France 1,662, Brazil 1,621 (App Store, 11-06). It now adds dozens of ratings a week, and it's already trending down.

Stalkie proved two things: catching a cheating partner through their phone spreads well on TikTok, and people will pay a weekly subscription for it. It hit Top Grossing in France and Brazil. Over the next six months, copycats launched one after another.

How it took off

Leaked launched in Aug 18 and stayed quiet for two months. By Oct 28, all stores outside the US together added only 5–17 ratings a day. In November that jumped to 21–48 a day. The number of countries where it charted grew from 40 to 4 in Nov 53 (App Store ratings and charts, 10-28 to 11-06).

Getting there took three moves.

1. Official account volume, testing before launch. The TikTok account @leaked_detective_game_ started posting in Jul 24, before the app was live, and has posted 1,017 videos so far. The captions reuse Stalkie's phrasing: "best game for girlies" (8-2.86M views, its top video), "finally a game for stalkers", "Only 5% can solve this case without hint". The account has 475 followers (TikTok, 11-06). It wasn't chasing followers. It wanted every video to have a shot at being pushed.

2. Portuguese and Spanish "detective persona" accounts riding the original's tags. From Oct 26 to Nov 6, a batch of accounts posted heavily, such as @cintia.detetive, @sara.detective and @lustalkerrr, with captions like "LEAKED, I work as a professional detective" and "investigating people's love lives with LEAKED". Each post @-mentions the same account, "Leaked DMs || Detective game", and carries #stalkiesecretspy. Single posts only got 200–1,500 views, but there were many of them, and the timing lines up with the November rating surge. From the outside, it's impossible to tell whether these were paid creators or accounts they built themselves.

3. 18 languages, targeting small-country charts. Every store has localized titles (Italian is Gioco Investigativo, German is Mobiles Detektiv). In places like Poland, Romania, Estonia and Latvia, a few dozen ratings are enough to land in the top 100 of the Entertainment Free chart. In Nov 6 its best placements were #34 on the Poland Entertainment Free chart (where it had only 45 ratings), then #46 in Estonia, #53 in Romania and #61 in Italy. It never charted overall in any country.

There was also free lift: in App Store "You might also like", Leaked, Stalkie and Snitchy keep appearing next to each other. Anyone who searched for this type of game gets recommended similar ones back and forth.

I found no evidence of paid ads. That doesn't mean there were none.

Where the money came from, and how much

The money comes from the paywall, and that's also the problem. Almost every negative review since October is complaining about the same thing: "Money grab," "Pay to play," "Have to subscribe after 5 minutes of play." The developer replied to everyone on October 9–14 saying a "watch ads for free play" option had been added, but in Oct 30 and Nov 5 US players wrote: "The dev says there's a free option. There isn't. After question 6 you still have to pay." One more 1-star review was harsher: "The whole game is AI-generated and they still charge for it."

The scale is small. The US store has 244 ratings and a 4.49 rating, the UK 71, Poland 45 and Italy 44 (App Store, 11-06). Based on ratings, global downloads are likely in the tens of thousands (estimate). It has only appeared in Top Grossing in small stores like Panama and Finland, so monthly revenue is likely under a few thousand dollars (inference).

Who it's competing with

(Ratings from App Store, installs from Google Play, as of 11-06)

This table tells a few things. On iOS, Leaked's volume doesn't rank near the top. The name "Leaked" is already in use by two studios on Android. On Android alone, Skytechlab's new installs per week exceed Leaked's total iOS installs since launch (estimate).

If it were you

The verdict: the demand is real and the build is cheap, but this wave is already crowded. Making another Leaked now likely means ranking behind a dozen rivals. The open space is at two ends: languages and platforms the original and the copycats haven't worked seriously, and the part they've all done badly: the payment experience and content quality.

Who it suits: small teams that can run a short-video account network and buy TikTok and Meta ads, and already have a story or text-game framework they can quickly reskin; or people who know a local market well enough to write "cheating boyfriend" plots that locals instantly recognize, like Japan's cheaters.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone hoping to repeat Stalkie through organic traffic in English-speaking markets. People unwilling to keep writing scripts, since these games are dead after one case and retention depends on updates. And people who can build a product but won't post videos.

How to do it:

• Pick a language or region no one has worked deeply yet. Japan already has cheaters. For Korean, Turkish, Indonesian, Arabic or Hindi, first search the App Store and Google Play for localized competitors; build where the field is empty.
• Localize the story, not just the interface. Swap the chat app for the one locals actually use (LINE, KakaoTalk, WhatsApp), and replace names, memes and cheating tropes with local ones.
• Don't copy Leaked's hard wall. The reviews are clear: players will pay, but they won't accept being locked out at question 6 while the promised ad unlock doesn't work. Keep the first case fully free, then offer a choice of "watch ads / wait / subscribe". Ratings look much better that way, and store recommendations follow.
• Script quality is where you can pull ahead. "AI-generated garbage" is already a common complaint in this category, so well-written suspense with real twists is a differentiator on its own.

How to get users: follow the path this category has already proven. A month before launch, run an official TikTok account to test creative, using lines like "only 5% of people can solve this without the hints" and "finally a game for stalkers". Add a batch of local-language persona accounts posting screen recordings in the style of "I'm investigating my boyfriend". Once a creative performs, take it to paid ads.

How early you need to be: the wave has run from January to now. The original is already declining, and copycats keep launching one after another. If you're going to do it, launch before the end of 2026, while the topic still has heat on TikTok (inference).

Signs you've read it wrong: ① the language you picked still can't break the top 100 of the local Entertainment chart a month after launch, meaning people there don't buy this theme; ② the weekly new ratings for Stalkie, Peekie and Snitchy keep falling into single digits, meaning the whole category is cooling, not just Leaked; ③ conversely, if a copycat gets "first case free + ads unlock" into the top 50 of Top Grossing, the payment experience is clearly the gap, and it's worth moving faster.