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Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

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Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#2
A nice sensible response, with some well-reasoned observations.

The thing about piracy I've always found weird is how hysterical some people get about it for their medium and not others. For example, I am good friends with several software developers who get furious about people pirating their products, but have no qualms about having gigs of copied music personally.

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#4
post #3

How are people cracking and using cracked applications on the iPhone? Am I just living in the dark by using the App Store and clicking "Install"?

There are various ways but you might look at this for ease of use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydia_%28application%29 (nearly 500k daily visitors sounds like it is pretty popular)

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#5
post #3

How are people cracking and using cracked applications on the iPhone? Am I just living in the dark by using the App Store and clicking "Install"?

I don't get it either. My guess is that people install a cracked version through Cydia to use on a jailbroken iPhone. I'd love to have this confirmed though.

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#6
post #3

How are people cracking and using cracked applications on the iPhone? Am I just living in the dark by using the App Store and clicking "Install"?

iPhones can run unsigned apps after only a few minor changes, even if they're not jailbroken. The most games and popular apps are widely available through the typical piracy channels.

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#7
It's interesting that they claim that piracy was largely responsible for an increase in sales... I wonder if this is more because people are using piracy to sample the games before they buy or because the pirating users are increasing the buzz behind the game?

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#8
85% piracy rates. Ouch. It hurts me to even read that, although part of me has to point out that when you're developing for an audience which considers $2 expensive and $5 highway robbery, going in with the expectation that people will happily pay you money is a little optimistic.

On the plus side, you can't possibly have a worse piracy problem with your application than China does with everything, and you'll probably eventually do what Chinese software companies do: put the real meat on the server, let everyone have your client for free, and let the users who prefer to Own Their Games Instead Of Renting Them cry to themselves in the corner.

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#9
post #7

It's interesting that they claim that piracy was largely responsible for an increase in sales... I wonder if this is more because people are using piracy to sample the games before they buy or because the pirating users are increasing the buzz behind the game?

According to him, the pirate users only sampled a little bit of the game before moving on. As the OP states, pirates are more interested in the novelty of it.

Re: Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

#10
Why we are not that concerned that our app has been pirated:

I think it takes a small dev studio or independent developer to have enough feel for these reasons why piracy isn't so bad.

I feel the same way about my book - I like seeing people pirate it, even if the publisher doesn't! It doesn't seem to hurt sales and raises awareness, as these guys have found.

That said, ripping off a PDF to boost print book sales is a different kettle of fish than ripping off a game that's identical to the legit version.. I wonder how this will fare long term.

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