the numbers are pretty consistent across developers, so I don't know why you can't believe it. ngmoco says 50-80% piracy. tap-fu is 80%. So its all same ballpark. To say you don't believe it is just people trying to minimize the issue. arn
How many iPhones have been sold to date? 30mil+, and pinch says 4mil are jailbroken with 50% picking up pirated apps. And over 50% of all iPhone users picking up legitimate apps. So ~15% of potential customers are aquiring these apps illegally. The music industry would probably laugh in your face. IFPI says 95% (probably more like 80%) of music downloads are obtained illegally. Seriously, when you deal with digital distribution it's a problem you have to suck up and deal with, because it enables you to get your material to customers with the least amount of effort and overhead. Not to mention, all these people are repeat offenders that will pick up every single hot new release that comes out, so of course those percentages are going to jump up to 70-90 percent for the first few days/weeks, but in the long run, the amount of people actually pirating the app is going to end up being ~30%. These percentages that dev's keep throwing out are misleading and just a way to pick up publicity. While some dev's may get it a lil worse than others, the app store as a whole is a lot better off than other digital distribution.
If you take the Pinch Media numbers seriously, they only tell the story, that less than 5% of all sold iPhones and iPod Touch devices use pirated software. So, if you see that 90% of the users of your game are pirates, what does this tell you? That 90% of your users come from 5% of the total market and that 10% of your users come from 95% of the market. So there obviously is something wrong, either the marketing sucked or the game sucks. Regarding the Pinch Media numbers, piracy is NOT a problem!
I love the excuses that some people are using to justify stealing games. Regardless of the size of the company, these games are sold on paper-thin profit margins, so every loss really does count. If you have enough money to buy a $300-$400 toy, you should be fine with paying the paltry amount these developers ask. Really, guys, come on now.
Pinchmedia is not able to find all pirates and the total number of iDevices is not the size of the game market. There are 40 million+ iDevices and few games have sold more than a million. It would be like saying the size of the PC game market would include all office PCs. iDevices are used for all different kinds of apps.
Your right, 40 million idevices aren't buying games, but half of them are. In fact, half of them are spending $7 a month on games. That's pretty close to the sales figures of consoles. I think I've read the average console owner will buy 1.5 games a year. I accounted for the over half of people that have not or never will put a game on their iPhone. But with apples marketing, the percentage of users with iPhones that will buy an application is more than likely to go up. How can you not see an iPhone commercial and not want to download an application. And to the guy above you, I'm not justifying piracy. I'm saying dev's need to stop crying because they are getting it a lot better than the rest of the digital distribution industry. They constantly throw out percentages that over excagerate the problem, it's a big publicity stunt and their doing nothing but hurting themselves. If they keep saying it's so easy that 95% of game buyers can do it, then someone is going to say "I can too", it deters other developers, and in my eyes makes them look like typical marketeers, just trying to make a story to get some publicity (cough ngmoco cough)
f*** those pirates i mean they destroy the howl app store devs dont get enough money and cant produce new games really sad am i right that you need a jailbroken device for that? but i just read an article that the "big" jailbreaking programms (cydia,etc.) are stop and that it gets harder to jailbreak with every new firmware apple makes
Isn't comparing unigue udid's against sales data kind of flawed? I have 3 ipods that are attached to my itunes account. By this method 2 of them would be flagged as pirate copies when I bought the game legit. I doubt multiple ipods on a single account are THAT rare of an occurrence. I know the 90% figure has been quoted by different devs, but it's difficult to wrap my head around it when only 10% of the iphones have even been jbed and who knows how many of them actually crack the copy protection.
I think the bigger problem is the organization of the app store and the sheer volume of crap apps, of course some dev's aren't gonna get a cut when you have 100000 other competitors. It's a dog eat dog world, and if you don't or can't make it to the top, you can either go somewhere else, or cry about it. These guys are living their dream jobs, developing independent games and apps, and the last thing they want to do is go back to EA. So they don't make it big and want to sit back and cry that they aren't in the top position where sales eclipse piracy by a long shot.
stop jailbreak=stop illegal downloads? if yes then apple should bring out a new firmware for FREE and all devs should update their game to that that firmware should be able to recognize "stolen" apps and delete and if you try to jailbreak or try to download and app illegal all datas should be erased and you cant get them back a very hard method but i would work
I am laughing at your suggestions. You think the Jailbreaking community will just hang up it's hat and give up? then you are naive. These guys are hardcore programmers and hackers that are even way ahead apple programmers and most devs and you think you can outsmart them with firmware upgrade? Don't make me laugh more please.
if you can track by the UDID, then DO something about it, otherwise STFU. it seems like everyone has their head in the sand about the issue and just saying 'do the right thing'. WTF is that? take out the digital bat and bash some heads in. i would venture to say they'd probably have made more money if they charged 0.99 for the app instead of 6.99. i personally dislike racing/driving games, and at $7 that would be a complete waste of money for me. but if it was $1, there's at least a chance i'd be curious enough (visuals looking nice) to just say "whatever, here's a buck, let me try it". anyway...
i dont think they will hang up all that would be silly and naiv but i think apple isnt silly and they know the problem with the piracy too so i think the are working on sth to stop it
It is not that hard to detect jailbroken iphones and disable the app. Developers just chose not to go that route yet. How to detect http://stackoverflow.com/questions/413242/how-do-i-detect-that-an-sdk-app-is-running-on-a-jailbroken-phone Beejive IM Moves To Block Out iPhone Pirates http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/19/AR2009031900312.html
Actually, I would like this game pulled from the AppStore IMMEDIATELY. It is a direct breach of apples rules to allow an app to transmit private information over the Internet without first asking permission of the user. This is the clearest breach of apples rules ever and the game should be pulled. How do I know this ? Because one of my apps transmitted a udid for a high score table and was rejected for this very reason. If apple want to play fair then they must reject this app.
That's a fair point. My brother and I share an iTunes account, so by this logic, when one of us buys a game, the other is pirating it.
