Ryan Tate at Wired dives into the seedy world of, um, apps. Getting to the top requires a bit of moral ambiguity and he outlines the many ways that app creators are artificially manufacturing buzz. Games, of course, are front and center.

Buying users. Let’s say you’re playing a game on your Android phone. You’d like some virtual currency to buy a new weapon, or farm implement, but you’d rather not whip out your credit card. No problem: An in-game ad informs you that you can earn several gold coins simply by installing a different app on your phone.

This scheme is known as “pay-per-install” and has been described by one venture capitalist as “crack for app developers.” One broker, Tapjoy, was reportedly on track to make $100 million per year on pay-per-install before Apple banned the practice from iOS last year. Now paid installs are largely confined to Google’s mobile operating system.

Even more disheartening is that app makers are timing their big breaks with raising a big round of money, placating investors to buy time. In one instance, a social video-sharing app in the course of one month closed a $30 million round, hit a peak of five million users, and then dropped to a million. Dark days ahead…