Piracy is getting worse...

[MindJuice]

There are two groups of people both being referred to as "pirates" in this thread, and I think it is useful to differentiate them.

First there are the people who actually do the work of breaking the copy protection measures on apps and make them available to others. There are very few of these people around. If you want to make an impact on iPhone app piracy, it would be best to target this group since they make the apps available and there are few of them.

The second group are the thousands of people that search for apps via torrents, etc. and download them. These people don't have the skills necessary to pirate the game themselves, but someone has done the hard part for them, so they see no reason not to take advantage of it.

The question is, if there was nobody from the first group making the apps available, would the people in the second group be more likely to just buy the games they want?

Many of these people have just grown up in a culture of instant internet gratification, including free music and movie downloads from P2P networks. They have no respect for copyright in the least. They think nothing of modding their XBox and downloading the latest Halo game, so stealing a $0.99 iPhone game seems like nothing to them.

Due to this thinking, I expect the answer to the above question is that very few would be willing to pay. They would just move on to whatever else they can get for nothing.

You're not likely to get rid of either of these groups of people anyway, and doing so wouldn't greatly increase sales. So I've just decided not to put any effort into adding mechanisms to prevent piracy in my apps. Everyone who has tried in the past has failed, so I doubt I would fare much better.

[jonlink]

Originally Posted by Carlos

...The reason behind these stats is probably something which is just hard to imagine for some of us: there are still some countries, where owning a credit card is not common. So they cannot download legally the apps, hence they download cracked ones.

However I'm still shocked that piracy is present in countries like Switzerland, Germany or USA. These people probably do it for fun, or these are just bad habbits...

Considering how many high school kids own iPod Touches and iPhones is it really that shocking?

[sprawl]

For one I think that the piracy conversion rates cited in the Tap Fu case are bogus--pirates who chose to later buy the app would still be detected as pirates unless they uninstalled the pirated app and then reinstalled from the app store.

We can speculate that the actual number of conversions were very low regardless, but I think it is a disservice to developers to claim that there is a 0% conversion rate as it effects the way we respond to piracy in our own software.

Google for BeejiveIM "PC Load Letter" and look at how they responded to piracy of their app. I haven't seen any detailed reports of conversion rates but they clearly dealt with some as an article pointed out that they had problem with ex-pirates getting the PC Load Letter message after buying the app legitimately.

For an app priced at $10 I think it's worth considering that their approach wound up producing real income for them--get an existing userbase hooked on your app and then cut off the pirates until they become legit supporters. Understand, of course, that this approach can only be valid when you have some sort of significant online component (instant messaging, multiplayer, DLC, maps, etc) that allows you to actually block the pirates from consuming additional resources.

As a professional web application developer I have to acknowledge that people expect more and more of their content to be free-- google searches are free, news articles are free, reviews, facebook, gmail, last.fm, etc.. Most services can survive on ad revenue but that isn't due to users explicitly placing value on the service.

The issues we encounter with game piracy aren't nearly as socially damaging as those related to other fields such as the impact of the internet on journalism--just consider the effect that free classifieds@craigslist have had on newspaper revenues.

Just as journalists cannot stop craigslist I don't believe we have any power to stop app store pirates so we need to focus on the ways that we can bring value to people that are willing to support us. Just sitting and thinking about DLC microtransactions, MMO subscription models and Steam-like online services will likely prove far more valuable than throwing time and effort into the piracy arms race.

[Flickitty]

Originally Posted by sprawl

Just as journalists cannot stop craigslist I don't believe we have any power to stop app store pirates so we need to focus on the ways that we can bring value to people that are willing to support us. Just sitting and thinking about DLC microtransactions, MMO subscription models and Steam-like online services will likely prove far more valuable than throwing time and effort into the piracy arms race.

I think you have written a pretty smart little response.

The digital age has brought about a lot of changes, and newspapers are just one of the fatalities. I fear that those who hold on to the old ways will be lost, much like the newspaper industry.

We need to change our views on piracy.

I've spoken to hundreds of developers, all with the same story. Dismal sales and rampant piracy. If you could get rid of 1000 pirate downloads in order to gain 50 legitimate downloads, would you do it? At what point do you reach an equillibrium of acceptance?

I wouldn't trade 1000 pirates for 50 legitimate users. I think it is more of tragedy that my game is NOT played by thousands.

[EssentialParadox]

Originally Posted by jonlink

Ads use bandwidth, which users may pay for.

I'm pretty sure browsing the website itself uses a lot more bandwidth than the ads that are there to support the website. Not to mention that the bandwidth you're using to view the website is being served to you, and paid for by the website owner, who in turn is paying for it with advertising on their site.

Originally Posted by jonlink

And then there are the ads that are also used to track users.

If you're afraid of analytics then you should switch off javascript, not use ad blocking software.

Originally Posted by jonlink

I feel my rights are just as important as the owners of the websites.

I know you're trying to argue ad blocking from a logical point of view, and a lot of what you're saying does make sense, especially intrusive advertising, but I don't think you can call advertising an infringement on your rights.

The truth is, if everyone on the net slowly began using ad blocking software, this website couldn't afford to be run. Same goes for many popular web sites and web services. The economy of the web is based on advertising. If that couldn't happen, we'd all have to pay a membership fee to join this website, and possibly even to use Google.

However you try and defend ad blocking, the short of it is: if you aren't prepared to view the ads on a website you shouldn't be visiting or using that website.

[EssentialParadox]

Originally Posted by Flickitty

The digital age has brought about a lot of changes, and newspapers are just one of the fatalities. I fear that those who hold on to the old ways will be lost, much like the newspaper industry.

We need to change our views on piracy.

I don't think you can take the old newspaper industry that is dying due to the advent of new internet technology, and then compare it to an industry that was created entirely for the internet. There's no magic way to create business models around piracy. For a majority of entertainment, the only business model is to sell your product. If you are giving your product away for free, you can't make any money from that.

Originally Posted by Flickitty

I wouldn't trade 1000 pirates for 50 legitimate users.

What if it was trading one million pirates for 50 000 legitimate customers?

[Flickitty]

Originally Posted by EssentialParadox

What if it was trading one million pirates for 50 000 legitimate customers?

That was why I asked 'at what point do you reach an equilibrium of acceptance'. There is a tolerance that goes both ways.

If I had 1 million pirates and 50,000 sales, I don't think I could complain. 50,000 is more than enough to keep me running for a couple years to make a new game. My game(s) were meant to be played first and foremost. If those games happen to make any money, I should consider myself extremely fortunate.

I am an artist by trade, not everything that I create is valuable or worth something. Even when it is a game.

I know it sounds like I support piracy- I don't. I don't ignore it either, I am aware of what is going on. This is how I know our piracy rate has not been anywhere near 90%... so far.

[jonlink]

Originally Posted by EssentialParadox

I'm pretty sure browsing the website itself uses a lot more bandwidth than the ads that are there to support the website. Not to mention that the bandwidth you're using to view the website is being served to you, and paid for by the website owner, who in turn is paying for it with advertising on their site.

A Flash ad or the like can be far more resource intensive (in terms of bandwidth and the host computer) than the site itself— which is usually mostly resource friendly text. And actually, most ads are hosted separately. There are exceptions, but those are not the rule.

Originally Posted by EssentialParadox

If you're afraid of analytics then you should switch off javascript, not use ad blocking software.

Not that simple. (see remotely hosted ads)

Originally Posted by EssentialParadox

I know you're trying to argue ad blocking from a logical point of view, and a lot of what you're saying does make sense, especially intrusive advertising, but I don't think you can call advertising an infringement on your rights.

I don't know if you are intentionally reframing what I am saying or doing it accidentally. I didn't imply that it was a right as in "freedom of speech" but a right as in "I don't want flash ads" vs "I want to show you flash ads." Neither is constitutionally protected.

Also, there's things like this.

I could go on, but I don't want to highjack this thread so I won't, suffice to say that you are making some serious misstatements. I only brought this up, and have now defend it, as an example of things like piracy and its effects are more complicated than many people make it out to be.

Regarding Flickitty's example, I think Newspapers are inappropriate to the discussion. Not because people are pirating the NY Times (though some would argue Google is/was doing just that), but because it is an example of people who couldn't figure out a business model that would work in the face of reality.

There isn't a magic way to create a business model around piracy, but there are non-magic ways. One such non-magic way is added value. Musicians, amongst others, are starting to do this it and it seems to be working for them. I'm not saying this is the only way or that _you_ have to do it this way, I am saying that there are ways aside than the standard business models ...and that using the phrasing "magic" is a disingenuous attempt to disparage anyone who'd rationally argue that other models *may* exist without actually offering any real thought.


ps. I haven't tried your game yet flickitty, but I took a look and the art is outstanding. I'll be sure to give it a shot when I have some free time.

[TractionGames]

In reply to an earlier question, yes we used the DRM copy protection technique on Pro Surfing (Wildcard). As an interesting side note, while googling around I just found this .info file screenshot about our games cracking status. From what I know about the piracy scene in other areas of gaming, it would seem to me that the iphone cracking 'scene' is evolving rapidly with a similar organisation level as more traditional piracy collectives.

They described our protection as: "DRM + Homemade". I guess the homemade aspect was a screen saying 'you are playing a cracked copy' etc.

Heres the link to the info file / image for anyone who is interested.

http://img2.abload.de/img/nfoqs00.gif

[EssentialParadox]

I never understood how there are groups of people spending a lot of their free time cracking iPhone games. I mean I can sort of understand when it's a big corporation like EA, with expensive $60 games, and DRM that might pose a fun challenge to crack… but I just can't grasp the fun or purpose of doing this on games from small indie developers on $1 - $5 games? You'd think if they had those kinds of programming skills they could instead spend that time making their own app store games, instead of trying to sabotage it for others.