The huge success of an AppStore failure

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The huge success of an AppStore failure
blog.gameized.com

I might be naive about this, but I really don't believe that a large percentage of those 20000 pirates would have paid for the game if there was no cracked version available for free. I think the ugly truth is that most people either cannot afford to or are unwilling to pay for apps, even if they cost less than a cup of coffee.

Hence I suppose that the piracy factor p = (pirated_copies / legit_copies) is bigger than 1 for most apps - and in many cases a whole lot bigger than one, if the perceived value of the app is especially low.

I'm surprised apple hasn't offered ios devs the same technique they use to limit piracy in the mac app store.

I don't think developers understand that pirates aren't customers, they are thieves. It is a crime of opportunity. If they can just take something for free they will, because they are probably 10-20 years old and they don't have enough disposable income to make buying a game easier than pirating one. So, they trade their extra time for their lack of money and go the pirated route even though it's a PITA.

Yes, there is a lot of piracy and there always will be. The only way around it is to ignore it and keep making software for your real customers - the people who paid for it in the first place.

The other thing you can do is try to use the thieves to promote your product. Hold contests, get them to post on message boards and other junk about your game. Have them post scores to FaceBook or Twitter. Turn them into your "street team" so to speak.

The point is, whining won't get you sales, so stop complaining about piracy and run your business.

After reading the article, your app got all of those users because it was featured on the cracked app web page - it's not clear to me that those same users would have found your app through the App Store. App discovery is probably the biggest problem for iOS games

Can you switch to an ad-supported model?