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Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

tinybuild.com

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Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#11

Post by tristanj »

Similar situation happened with Monument Valley, a game that hit #1 on app store and won a 2014 Apple Design award. The devs tweeted that only 5% of Android players paid for the app. On iOS, 40% paid [1]. Later they released some sales numbers that show only 2.4m sales but 10m+ installs, implying that the majority of their installs weren't paid for. [2]

[1] Hit mobile game Monument Valley and piracy: ‘Only 5%’ of Android players paid for it https://recode.net/2015/01/06/mobile-game-piracy-isnt-all-ba...

[2] Monument Valley in Numbers http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-v...

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#12

Post by benologist »

voltagex_ wrote: post #3

I wonder if Google Play allows pricing segmentation per area. I'm seeing a $6.55AUD game, which is higher than most, although if it frees me from any kind of IAP I'd consider it.

Prices can be manually entered per country or calculated from a base price in your account currency. In either case it does not change again until the developer updates it.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#13

Post by dublinben »

legohead wrote: post #10

Getting some insight from the pirates would be interesting. If a pirate is detected, pop up a quick radio selection box: Thank you for playing the game. I noticed you pirated it and would like to know why (you can still play the game): * I can't afford the price * My parents wont let me buy games * I want to try the game free first * I believe games should be free * My computer is old and I don't know if it can play…

It's not surprising that Brazil, Russia, and China top the list for pirate users. This game is probably very expensive for users in those countries, if they are even able to easily pay for it.

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#17

Post by Rumudiez »

yannyu wrote: post #5

Whose idea was it to have the 2 initial pie graphs switch colors? It makes it look like there's some sort of inverse relationship between pirating and purchasing on a given platform, when in fact it's roughly the same proportion of pirates and purchasers on mobile and PC. http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/re... http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pi...

Their analysis doesn't match up with the pie graphs either until you look up pricing.

Punch Club costs $9.99 on Steam but only $4.99 on iOS, so the volume of sales in terms of units sold realizes about a 50/50 split between PC and mobile legitimate players, rather than the implied 70/30 indicated by revenue.

NOW their analysis makes sense (more PC pirates than mobile). If the colors of the graph actually matched I would have just assumed their text was wrong!

...unless, of course, the piracy chart is in the same relative terms of cost and instead portrays _lost_ revenue...

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#18

Post by [deleted] »

yannyu wrote: post #5

Whose idea was it to have the 2 initial pie graphs switch colors? It makes it look like there's some sort of inverse relationship between pirating and purchasing on a given platform, when in fact it's roughly the same proportion of pirates and purchasers on mobile and PC. http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/re... http://i0.wp.com/tinybuild.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pi...

[deleted]

Re: Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times

#19

Post by joshschreuder »

On a similar note, here's what the devs of Game Dev Tycoon did with pirates of their game.

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624727

Interesting article that after reading it made me go out and buy the game (so a solid marketing effort too!)

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