It seems the game was forced to shut down its referral system by Google on the 30th which removed the incentive for spammers and effectively stopped their actitivites. I suspect the whole situation leaves a lot of developers with a bad taste in their mouth, though (this is another thread where developers have commented). Obviously, the posts referenced are just a small, vocal minority of the developer base, but I would be surprised if the same sentiments are not shared by most of the developers who have been spammed.

I think the real problem, though, is that there has been no communication from Google. People can guess and discuss what happened, but in practice all potential future spammers of the market out for a quick buck are seeing is that (a) spamming the market is pretty much risk free, and (b) it is (sadly) effective in getting downloads. Perhaps I overestimate the impact of this spam campaign on the market (though if even as marginal games like mine got spammed, the spam has to have been pretty widespread), but it does seem to me that this was a big enough issue that an official response/statement would have made sense.

Anyway, I hope that the appointment of developer advocate(s) like yourself reflect a shift in how Google communicates with its developer base and I look forward to seeing in what directions you will nudge the Android platform in terms of game development. These are interesting times for gaming.

Recent case in point:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?fid=173b4c35501e989300048528e0868310&hl=en

Why is an app allowed to transgress the TOS and spam/encourage spam on the Android market for more than a week without any reaction from Google or in fact any acknowledgement from Google that the problem exists? Obviously this is not your job, but it hardly leaves developers with the impression that Google cares about independent development on the Android platform when stuff like that is allowed to run unchecked.