An image reading "1000 UC": an Arabic "free game currency" app by an Egyptian solo developer, 130k installs a week

An Egyptian developer took the long-standing demand among Arab teens for "free PUBG UC and Free Fire diamonds" and packaged it in an app whose store page only mentions "watch videos to earn points, swap for pictures, enter draws." They listed it in the EVENTS category, which has almost no competition. Installs grew from 197 impressions to 130k in a week, and it hit the top of the category charts in dozens of countries. The money comes from rewarded video ads. What's worth studying is the distribution, not the product, and its reputation is already collapsing.

An order that waited two days

On Oct 2026 28 at 10:47 PM, a user named محمود سيد placed an order in the app to swap for 1000 UC (PUBG's in-game currency, which Arabic players call "شدات"). Two days later, on Oct 30 at 4:26 PM, he left a review on Google Play: the order was still "pending," nobody answered customer support, and "this app forces you to watch ads for points, claims they can be exchanged for vouchers or cash, but never pays out."

Around the same time, another review got 401 "helpful" votes: "I used 300 points to get 500 UC. The points were deducted, but the order has been waiting forever. The developer said it would arrive within 48 hours. The time passed, it still hasn't arrived, and when I asked again they stopped replying." Under a YouTube tutorial, someone put it more bluntly: "700 points for 1000 diamonds, and what I got was a downloaded picture." (Google Play reviews 10-28, 10-30; YouTube comment 11-04)

The app is called توليد رقم المسابقات, meaning "generate competition number." Its English name is Creative Rewards, and its package name is com.creativehub.rewardsapp.

What it actually is

The store page pitch (Google Play Saudi store, 11-06) goes like this: browse a set of digital pictures, watch "optional" rewarded videos to earn points, use the points to unlock and download pictures. You can also enter draws to get a participation number. A line at the bottom reads: "We do not guarantee prizes or results." Content rating: ages 3 and up.

What users actually see is something else. The "pictures" in the image library are product images labeled with UC and diamond denominations. Users think they're using points to buy game currency, but the store description only says "download pictures." A few orders did arrive (YouTube comment 10-31: "waited a week and it came through"), but most get stuck in review.

It didn't start out this way. When it launched on Oct 9, it was a tool for "joining draws and getting a participation number." The official site creativerewardapp.tech still uses that framing, along with a back end for organizers. The Oct 27 1.1.6 version added the picture library, points wallet, and rewarded videos. Growth started right after that.

The name the developer registered on Play is عبدالرحمن محمد رمضان (Abdelrahman Mohamed Ramadan), based in Egypt, with a support phone number starting +20. The same account also has Sendora, a "recover deleted messages" app (about 187k installs), and DownHub, a video-to-audio converter (about 487k installs). AppBrain records 8 apps in total and about 1M installs, all started in the last 2026 years. The pattern is the same each time: name the app after a trending Arabic search term and make money from ads alone.

How fast it rose, how fast it fell

(Google Play data, 10-29 to 11-06; front-page listing shows 3.9 stars 11-06)

Three things to note:

• Google's install count lags. By Oct 29 it already had 2,477 ratings, yet the install count still showed 197. Real installs in late October were probably already over ten thousand. So part of the "from 197 to 130k in a week" growth is just delayed reporting.
• The rating count looks too high to be real. 130k installs against 10k ratings, about 7.8%, where a typical app sits at 1% to 3%. It could be points-for-reviews inside the app, or fake ratings. Unverified. Five-star totals also dropped by 183 in Nov 6, which looks like Google cleaning up. Also unverified.
• Growth is already slowing. Daily new ratings fell from 11-01 in 2,256 to 11-06 in 387. Daily installs fell from about 37k in early November to about 6 thousand (estimated). One-star reviews rose from 166 to 2,089.

On the chart, in Oct 29 it ranked #1 on Google Play's Events category free chart in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Nigeria, the UAE, and Argentina 13, #6 in the US, and #3 in Germany and France. appwinners.eu logged it at #1 in the Events category across 173 countries in Oct 28. By Nov 6, it had slipped to #4 in most countries, and #2 in Turkey.

Why this one

The demand needs no education. Among teen players in Egypt, the Gulf, and the Levant, "free UC / diamonds" is a standing topic. Searching "شدات مجانا" (free UC) on TikTok routinely turns up videos with hundreds of thousands to millions of views. The app just wraps that demand in a shell that can be listed on Play and carry ads.

A clever category pick. EVENTS was originally home to ticketing and invitation tools. In the Saudi store, the top apps were Fever, a Quran player, and a wedding invitation tool. In the US store it was StubHub and SeatGeek (Google Play charts, 11-06). Those established apps gained only tens of thousands of installs a week, so a new app adding tens of thousands in a few days could easily take the top spot, and reaching the top gave it chart exposure across dozens of countries.

The name is the search term. The app name is the Arabic search phrase "توليد رقم المسابقات" itself. On Facebook, an account named Abdelrahman Ramadan posted a video titled "شدات pubg و جواهر فري فاير" (PUBG UC and Free Fire diamonds), with 7,200 views. The caption's first step is "search 'توليد رقم المسابقات' on Google and download this app." The name matches the developer registered on Play, but I did not directly verify that the account belongs to the same person.

Filling in the small search channels. On YouTube, a channel with 3,190 subscribers posted a tutorial on Oct 26 and got 7,568 views; a channel created Nov 4 with only 6 subscribers posted a tutorial on the same topic that looks like a promo account. There's also a long Arabic-language "review" on hitprime.net from Oct 30, plus a pile of auto-indexed APK sites.

How the money comes in. No in-app purchases. It runs entirely on rewarded video. Users need to accumulate 300 to 1000 points for each redemption, so each person has to watch a lot of ads. Rewarded video CPMs in the Middle East and Gulf are high by global standards. Fulfillment cost is close to zero, since most redemptions are just a picture. Actual revenue isn't visible from outside. Third-party tools only estimate that "ads account for 100%" of revenue.

One open question: where did the first wave of over thirty thousand installs come from? The Facebook video had only 7,200 views, and the YouTube tutorials only a few thousand, which doesn't add up. More likely it spread through forwards in Telegram and WhatsApp groups, or through ads that the ad libraries didn't capture (inference).

Who it's competing with

(Install figures from Google Play, around 11-06)

The "free diamonds" business has been overrun in India for a long time, with several apps above ten million installs. This app differs in only three ways: it's in Arabic, it sits in the EVENTS category, and it uses "draw numbers / picture store" as its shell. In the Arabic market, I found no similar app that broke into the top category charts in dozens of countries in the same period, and no copycats have shown up yet. Almost nobody in developer circles has mentioned it, and no media has covered it. Among Arabic players, many reviews have already labeled it a scam.

If it were you

C: some lessons to learn, following it isn't worth much. What's worth learning is the distribution structure: pick a weak category where the incumbents are old products, use a ready-made search term in a smaller language as the app name, tell people in Facebook and short videos to "search for this name," and reach the top of category charts in dozens of countries at low cost. What not to copy is the core: getting users to believe they can get game currency when all they receive is a picture. Doing that means betting that takedowns and bans are slower than ad revenue.

Who it suits: indie developers already running a portfolio of pure ad-monetized utilities who know AdMob rewarded video and Play review well, ideally working in a language like Arabic, Turkish, or Indonesian where user acquisition is cheap and the category is empty. Use it as a textbook on "weak category + demand-word naming" and apply it to a legitimate utility of your own.

Who it doesn't suit: people who want to build a long-term product and grow a brand and loyal users; people who can't handle one-star reviews or the risk to a developer account; people who plan to copy "points for game currency" without the money to actually pay out. PUBG and Free Fire currency is the publisher's virtual currency, and third-party "free" top-ups already sit at the edge of platform policy.

How to do it: If you want to build a reward app, learn from Mistplay, not this one. Payouts have to be real, and rewards should be small and instant (Google Play gift cards, mobile top-ups, a few official in-game vouchers). Cover redemption costs with rewarded-ad revenue, and first calculate how many ads each user has to watch before a redemption is affordable. Choose a category with weak competition and a language that's still open, and before launch check the top ten in each country's category chart to confirm that tens of thousands of installs in a few days can reach the top five.

How to get users: Name the app with the exact search term in the target language. Have the developer appear on camera in short videos showing "how to use it, and it really paid out," post them on Facebook and TikTok, and send users to search for the name in the store. Screenshots of payouts are themselves good creative. This app's one-star reviews show that reputation can turn faster than growth, and that payouts are the only thing that holds up.

When to get in before others: No rush. This kind of "free game currency" demand is constant and there's no closing window. What you should wait to see is how it ends.

What would mean you read it wrong: (1) If it's still around at the end of November, daily installs are back in the tens of thousands, and its average rating has stopped falling, that means Google is letting this kind of shell through. "Information gap + weak category" would be more durable than I think, and I overestimated the risk of following it. (2) If two or three Arabic clones appear within a month and also reach the top of the EVENTS charts, the gap is real and already getting crowded. (3) Conversely, if it gets removed or its ratings are mass-cleaned in November, the path loses even its distribution advantage: a weak category gets you charted fast, but also gets you noticed fast.

Data and sources

• Google Play store page (Arabic page, Saudi store, 11-06 read): store description, developer info, original review text, 3.9 stars, #3 in the EVENTS free chart.
• Google Play daily installs, ratings, and category chart data (10-29 to 11-06).
• appwinners.eu (#10-28 in EVENTS in 173 countries), AppInsider (#1 in EVENTS in Japan 10-26 5), AppGazers, AppGoblin, AppBrain developer page.
• YouTube: Feed Curiosity, "شرح تطبيق توليد رقم المسابقات" (10-26) and its comments; the Appify channel's video on the same topic (11-04).
• Facebook: Abdelrahman Ramadan's video (7,200 views). I did not directly verify whether this is the same person as the developer.
• hitprime.net Arabic review (10-30); official site creativerewardapp.tech.
• View counts for TikTok videos tagged "شدات مجانا" (free UC). No ads from it turned up in the Meta ad library (not finding ads there doesn't mean none were run).
• Revenue, the real payout rate, and whether ratings were incentivized or faked are all unverified. Wherever I wrote "estimated" or "inferred," that's what it is.