Just read the article: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/07/14/developer-says-more-90-cent-ios-games-are-pirated/ This means that developers are only getting about 1/10 of the money because of pirated apps. The discussion is from Gameized, the devs of FingerKicks. Gameized has revealed that there are over 17,000 active players playing the game via Game Center. That should mean that Gameized should have 17,000 sales. But Gameized has only made around $800 in sales for FingerKicks. What a sad, sad world. Very disappointed in people who have pirated apps on their iDevices.
Just because someone pirated the game doesn't mean they will pay for it, so they are not getting 1/10 of the money they would have, but more like 1/2, because the majority of pirates are kids without credit cards.
Lol, enough with the piracy statistics already. Pirates aren't going to stop, and there's really nothing any of us can do about it. Here at TA, I'm pretty sure most of us actually buy our games. I can't imagine what it's like to pirate a $0.99 game though.
Pirating does suck, but this stat is for one game. I'd say the top sellers are selling way more legit copies than pirated (I may be way off as this is uneducated opinion, but there can't be over a million people pirating games). Also, I must agree with the argument I have seen a ton of times, pirated copy does not equal lost sale most of the time. Only a small percentage. Besides, it seems like this will be an issue for the entirety of the digital age. People just have to look at it as not even a portion of the potential consumer base, and just say it is free marketing.
I call BS, at most 1 in 10 iDevices are jailbroken and maybe 75 percent of those are used for piracy. If you've sold 160 copies you would have sold around 200 if the platform was pirate free and even that is an extremely high estimate. Also why is it always developers whose apps aren't selling complaining about this? Not every app is going to be Angry Birds, if it's not selling maybe it's because it's underexposed or people don't actually want it? Hmm?
But people plays the multiplayer part. It means they like it. Anyway, why is apple not doing anything? They know who pirates with game center - it's linked to 1 account, so they know if you bought it or not.
The race to the 99 cent bottom in the Appstore is a much bigger threat to developers than piracy ever could be.
Usually it adds the game to your gamecenter profile immediately after loading, if they opened it once and then deleted it without removing it from their profile then it's still there. If I had to guess the extremely high piracy numbers come from kleptopirates that download everything. Ether they were charging more at some point of they've sold roughly 800 copies at 99 cents and not 160 like the article states.
Wait a minute, this is about Fingerkicks again? Really? The dev made a thread about this literally two days ago. Quoting myself from the original thread, in which I detail how the dev basically breaks every basic rule of appstore advertising and promotion The honest truth of the matter is that Fingerkicks is simply not well advertised, not that creative, innovative, or fun, and really not worthy of the praise the developer thinks it deserves. It's also lacking a lite version, so, as I mentioned in the post above, many people who want to try a game that looks mediocre in the screenshots and description before buying it would have to resort to piracy. This is not a case of people being jerks and pirating something that deserves praise. This is a case of a developer with an overinflated sense of entitlement. The fact that they cried about it to news sites instead of asking their customers for feedback on how to make the game more interesting and appealing says quite a lot. Edit: 284 google search results for this article, often reposted by the same few people. It's pretty clear that the dev is just trying to generate some RAH RAH RAH PIRACY IS BAD JAILBREAKING IS BAD hype-- probably to drive sales to their mediocre game.
There's been a couple threads about piracy in the dev forum about similar bouts of piracy. One thing they all have in common is that the piracy seems to mostly happen in the first few days of an App being released. This indicates to me that it's probably just reflective of a group of people that will probably pirate as many apps as they can, and not people who are necessarily interested in the app. If piracy was a huge problem and the app was a ton of fun, it certainly would not have stopped at 17,000 players. I sincerely hope that piracy isn't a big issue, but I feel like if it was we'd be hearing more noise from larger developers and then I have no doubt Apple would do something about it. Hopefully when my game comes out those 17k will represent less than 1% of the player base rather than 90% of it .
No, piracy is not theft. But that does not make it legal. We can get into a long argument about where and why legality and the extent of it comes in, but plain and simple, you get enjoyment out of a pirated app for however long you used it when it was intended to be sold, so yes, I see it as you do not support those devs, especially all the ones you never bought the game from and just demo. It would be like saying, let me download a movie illegally, watch it, and if I like I will buy it. Seems to convenient for you to write it off as your way of trying something. If you don't like that you cannot test many apps before buying, you should move on to the next platform. I agree that crying about piracy is stupid, but in my opinion, no more stupid than those who pirate. Not a direct insult to the people that pirate, but rather there morals.
No, they don't. A person's Game Center ID does not have to be linked to the purchaser's Apple ID in any way, shape, or form. There is absolutely nothing about GC that would allow them to use it to combat piracy. For example, in my household, everything is purchased under my Apple ID (which is tied to my GC email/ID as well but it doesn't have to be). However, there's also my son and daughter playing these completely legit, completely within the iTunes TOS, apps with their own GC IDs that have nothing to with my Apple ID at all. I have another GC ID that I use for beta testing, also not linked to my Apple ID. Then, once we add another device to the house's stable, we'll set up yet another GC account for my wife, which also won't be linked to my Apple ID. Just how would your propose that GC be used to combat piracy given the way the system works?
Welcome to the dark world of internet and business, iOS game developers. $ony and Nintendo has been suffering from the very same piracy for years for their PSP and DS games. I'm not even gonna mention about the PC gaming piracy.....
I've spent alot of time on a game dev forum and they all seem to agree, although they HATE piracy, it's not a lost sale. Pirates don't buy games the majority of the time, you just have to deal with it.
^THIS +1. Didn't Infinity Blade make like, $1 million its first week? I'm sure that game got pirated WAY more than Fingerkicks has or will ever get pirated. You don't see Epic coming on here and crying about it. If the game is as great as the developer believes it is, they'd see it in their sales.
+1 for this, I've heard it all the time. If one person jailbreaks easily and starts pirating, they may tell their friend "oh dude this game is amazing, you should try it out", and their friend replies "oh cool! How much does it cost?", once that happens, the person that pirated will probably explain the whole concept of jailbreaking and pirating to their friend. If their friend refuses to pirate, it gives a greater chance for that person to feel like an outcast when they've actually bought the app, rather than pirate it (due to the large amount of pirates and pressure). Once a person starts jailbreaking and pirating, it basically spreads to the next person. In no way does this support the developer at all if you see the pirating domino effect.
This argument is severely flawed. Infinity Blade was an enormously hyped game with lots of money spent on marketing and such. Epic Games expected large revenue from the game, and likely also anticipated piracy. Piracy isn't so much an issue with these large development studios, but with smaller, indie-developed games. Epic doesn't come here and cry about piracy because they don't need to come here and cry about piracy. They "made like, $1 million [in their first week]". For the developer of Fingerkicks, one pirated download is a much bigger deal than hundreds of pirated downloads is to Epic.
Tip to developers: Have a lite version that is replayable! The more someone plays your lite version, the more likely someone is going to buy the full version. Also, don't be greedy. Don't have IAP for items that gives you an advantage if your game is already $7.50 (I'm looking at you gameloft).
