Piracy on the App Store

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by RareSloth, Aug 10, 2015.

  1. RareSloth

    RareSloth Well-Known Member
    Patreon Bronze

    How are your piracy rates on the App Store?

    For every copy of Furdemption sold, 2.69 copies are pirated. We used Flurry data to compare to actual sales. Our App is premium with no IAP, currently selling for $2.99. Just thought I would share. At what rates are your games pirated?

    Cheers,
    Brian
     
  2. Option4Studios

    Option4Studios Active Member

    Jan 1, 2014
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    I didn't know how bad piracy was on iOS until I saw an article on Gamesutra recently. I think that particular developer's data was 60% pirated vs 40% sales ratio. It was 70% vs 30% on Android.

    I don't suppose there's anyway of finding out whether it's certain territories which pirate games more?

    Rich
     
  3. We always had large play numbers in China which didn't match the number of downloads which we suspect is piracy. When we released on Android our piracy numbers went way up. Mostly Russia.

    I would love to read that Gamasutra article if you have a link.
     
  4. Option4Studios

    Option4Studios Active Member

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    #4 Option4Studios, Sep 13, 2015
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2015
  5. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

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    It's hard to call it piracy on Android when MV was the Amazon free app of the day.

    I always wonder how accurate these piracy stats. I can't really think of any when they could accurately tell.
     
  6. SpiritBomb Studios

    SpiritBomb Studios Well-Known Member

    Oct 16, 2013
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    Those who can pirate iOS games have plenty of technical skills & time & patience, they will not buy premium games anyway, so fighting them will be even more costly than just let them be your free users. They might be good for exposure purpose, I guess.
     
  7. Zwilnik

    Zwilnik Well-Known Member

    Unfortunately they also devote their time and patience towards distributing your games to people who don't have skills, time & patience and might even have been customers. The "Oh they'd never have been customers anyway" argument is as old as piracy and with modern digital distribution methods, very dangerous.
    If you've got a popular game that's already got traction it's less of a problem, but if it's new and still trying to get visibility in the App Store, the loss of sales (or downloads) from the proper store to pirate sites who make money off google ads, means you're not just losing potential customers, you're also losing a huge amount of chart position, reviews and critical visibility that you need to get your game successful initially.
     
  8. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

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    It's only going to lose you chart position if those games are getting proportionally more piracy than the other apps. I don't see any reason to think that that is the case.
     
  9. SpiritBomb Studios

    SpiritBomb Studios Well-Known Member

    Oct 16, 2013
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    #9 SpiritBomb Studios, Sep 16, 2015
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2015
    Piracy is ILLEGAL, and I do know the feeling of being pirated.
    But it is even more dangerous to try fighting it on your own. If you don't have unlimited resource, I'd think it would be better to save them for better things: improve marketing, customer service, game quality,... or find smarter ways to monetize even when you're pirated (for example, adding display ads or cross-promotion banners leading to your original games,...)

    For the second argument, I agree with dancj
     
  10. Zwilnik

    Zwilnik Well-Known Member

    Only when all apps lose the same percentage of sales to piracy, which isn't the case. The apps with lower visibility (new, smaller ad budget etc.) will typically lose a much higher number of sales initially. For instance if 500 people pirate every game on launch, that's terminal for a smaller dev but not even a blip for a larger one in terms of chart position.
     
  11. Stroffolino

    Stroffolino Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    Apr 28, 2009
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    Typically, only a modest percentage of players downloading an app actually uses Game Center. But because of piracy, it's not uncommon for a pay app that's barely selling to end up with thousands of Game Center players.

    Now, that doesn't necessarily hurt the developer directly - few of those people would have ever paid for the app.

    But it can hurt multiplayer online games. In the first week of "You Against Me" there were many Chinese players that pirated the game. They'd start a game, but never actually make follow-up moves. This made for a frustrating experience with legitimate users that were trying to match up with fellow players. Things have thankfully turned around, but it was rather annoying at the time.
     
  12. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

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    That doesn't make sense. It'll only hurt (financially) when people who would have bought the game pirate it instead.

    For a low profile game there would have been few people downloading it in the first place so the 500 people won't make much difference. If anything I think piracy could raise the profile of smaller games more than it will for the more popular games and wind up helping their chart position.

    Not that I'm condoning piracy. If a publisher wants that kind of publicity they can choose to make the game free themselves.
     
  13. Blackharon

    Blackharon Well-Known Member

    Mar 15, 2010
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    Game Designer for Ludia
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    Not true. Server costs, support costs and other incidentals increase whether or not a player paid for the app. When I was indie, the number of requests for support on JB iphones greatly outnumbered the support requests for out of the box devices.
     
  14. Zwilnik

    Zwilnik Well-Known Member

    Raising the profile via pirate downloads does absolutely nothing positive for a game's sales. Only legitimate downloads/sales from the App Store count towards chart position. Take a few downloads away from those legitimate ones and a game that might just scrape the top 200 and get seen by a few more people (and downloaded more) doesn't. So it directly hurts chart position and thus sales.

    As most of the rush of piracy on a new game is in its first few days when there's the point scoring among the warez sites of getting as many people as possible to grab the new game they got, it's also hitting a game when it needs the downloads most.
     
  15. Felipe MGaia

    Felipe MGaia Well-Known Member

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    Just checked the data for my recent release, Tiny Empire, which costs $2.99. Used data from Flurry to compare, too.

    For every legit download, we have 4.47 pirated copies. Even worse than Furdemption! :eek:

    This is all mostly from China, too.
     
  16. Option4Studios

    Option4Studios Active Member

    Jan 1, 2014
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    It says in the article that they are excluding the 1 day promotion on Amazon. Sounds right as I'd imagine every person who pirates games would have downloaded MV.
     
  17. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

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    True. I hadn't taken that into account.
     
  18. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

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    I wasn't talking about gaining chart position due to pirated copies. I was talking about people playing it and telling their friends. And as I said before, those few lost sales will only knock a game out of the top 200 if it is for some reason getting hit worse than other games are.
     
  19. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

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    Ah Okay
     
  20. Option4Studios

    Option4Studios Active Member

    Jan 1, 2014
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    Personally I'm more interested in the piracy stats for western countries plus Australia and New Zealand.

    The digital age is a wonderful thing in opening up markets where we wouldn't normally venture. However in some countries piracy and counterfeit goods are the way of life. I think these countries are skewing the figures somewhat.

    If our legit sales in the U.K and U.S were 70+% and China is bringing it down to under 40% as a made-up example, I would be ecstatic with the first figure! Any sales in China would be just a bonus.

    Main thing is for Western countries to continue to educate that piracy is unacceptable.
     

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