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Our Pirate Game is Getting Owned By App Store Pirates

silverskullgame.blogspot.com

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

#11

Post by m_eiman »

patio11 wrote: post #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 probabl…

I've read a few articles/posts about piracy rates, and it seems that a piracy rate of 90% is "normal", at least for PC titles. So to me it seems like piracy on the iPhone is lower than it could have been, and a lot lower if it drops to 50%. Still a problem, of course, but if Apple keep making it more complicated to jailbreak the hardware it might actually be moving towards 0%.

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

#12

Post by redorb »

allenp wrote: post #4
bestes wrote: 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)

not to encourage, but You simply jailbreak the iphone, once you have Cydia - then find read up on installous (which is a pirate version of the appstore) works up to 3.0 and had 90% of the most popular apps.

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

#13

Post by borism »

Scriptor wrote: post #9
jcl wrote: 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.

That's an interesting point - pirates mostly don't actually use their stuff!

Essentially pirating is a way to try the app out, then I guess the percentage of pirates who buy it is pretty high. So why not make trying apps more convenient?

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

#14

Post by jawngee »

kingsley_20 wrote: post #5
bestes wrote: 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.

You can't install cracked stuff through Cydia, you have to use something like installous via hackulo.us.

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

#15

Post by jdg »

Eh, this game is being pirated more than the average app.

From what I heard at Greg Yardley (PinchMedia)'s talk at 360idev yesterday, the average piracy rate is 34%. My personal experience with Boxcar lines up with those numbers, along with a 0.056% conversion rate from pirated to paid. The "average" there, again according to PinchMedia, is 0.043% or 1 in 233.

They're taking the right approach in that, well, the truth is if someone is going to pirate something then even if you try and dissuade them they'll just move on to the next one. In my particular case, I send a push notification letting them know we've detected that they are using a pirated copy, and then disable their account. If they purchase the legitimate version, their account will automatically be re-enabled.

If I didn't have a backend server with monthly hosting costs, I wouldn't care that the application was being pirated. They use it, then move on. Based on the conversion rates I've seen myself and have heard of from others, it's just not worth the effort to try and get someone to purchase it.

Those conversion rates also invalidate the entire "I'm just trying it before buying it" argument, which is complete bullshit.

Pirates discuss it on Twitter: http://twitpic.com/jor06

And I also get emails about it -- angry ones: http://jdg.net/post/160979167/retard

http://jdg.net/post/151845213/some-people-just-amaze-me-unfo...

http://jdg.net/post/142912680/yep-dont-buy-this-piece-of-cra...

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

#16

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #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 probabl…

[deleted]

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

#17

Post by WesleyJohnson »

[deleted] wrote: post #16
patio11 wrote: post #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 probabl…

[deleted]

It seems to me that people are associating the platform with the price its software should cost, rather than on the quality, playability or usability of said software.

Sure, some of the App Store games you could easily picture winding up on one of those "5,000 Games!" CDs if they were developed on the PC. Those Apps probably should be free or 99 cents at the most. Some of the games and apps could easily be considered full featured desktop products that might sell for $10-$20 on a PC/Mac. It's my assumption that one of the reasons these are NOT desktop apps already is because it's notoriously hard to market and publish desktop software and because the iPhone/iPod Touch has the "IT" factor right now. But just because it's an iPhone app and not a Mac app, why should it cost any less?

Unless of course you consider the extra marketing and publishing costs of putting out games for a PC or Mac into the cost of the product. But does that really make a $20 app a $1 app if you remove those costs?

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

#20

Post by catzaa »

petercooper wrote: post #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…

Off topic: What are the final costs of a book and what is the share? (i.e. printing, authors cut, publisher’s cut)?

Buying books really hurts my back-pocket (the last book cost me $140+ dollars – and it is a lot more expensive if you do the currency conversation). What is sad is that when I move to another country I will not be able to move all my books. If there is a good e-book reader and books are well-priced (e.g. $30-40 directly to the author) it would feel a lot less painful.

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