"My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?" • Hacker News Board

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#101

Post by Vitaly » Tue, Jun 07, 2011, 3:45 PM UTC

erik wrote: post #22

Vitaly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of cases when it was documented for piracy to bring positive change. This guys problem? Patience ;) Come on. The game was mass pirated like yesturday? Does he really expect the positive loop back to kick in that fast? People that pirated it will take time to play it, like it, mention it to someone that might buy it, blog it, show off to friends etc, etc, etc. it takes time. but eventually those 500 pir…

I find this to be an interesting data point: http://www.indiegames.com/2008/02/opinion_casual_games_and_p... A casual game developer dramatically increased their sales by improving the effectiveness of their DRM. I strongly dislike DRM in games, and will avoid games that push it to far. But it's hard to argue against the sales numbers quoted in the linked article.

if you make pirating harder you will undeniably get some of the would be pirates buying instead. and of course you can measure it easily on you sales.

but.

they say the conversion is 1000 pirates vs. one sale. Which only convinces me that im right. think about it. 999 people less will be using the program. yes, you will sell one more copy, but how many future sales you loos because those 999 people are not going around talking about your program, playing it in public, recommending it to friends...

Their sales rose short term but I think the've lost long term for sure.

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#102

Post by Vitaly » Tue, Jun 07, 2011, 3:53 PM UTC

teamonkey wrote: post #15

rkalla wrote: post #5

In other piracy discussions I've always viewed piracy as organic-marketing. Meaning if you wanted to nurture the piracy (e.g. no DRM, easier install paths, etc.) you would probably get your software in the hands of more people and just redirect what you would have spent on marketing to keeping it in the bank and track the piracy as marketing costs. I'll admit that is a rosy way to look at it, but I'm definitely one o…

> I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first place" believers. I think that's only true for X% of the people who pirate. Pro-piracy groups like to assume X=100% (that people who pirate would never be persuaded to purchase a copy), anti-piracy groups assume that X=0% (that every pirate can be persuaded to purchase a copy). The truth is that X is probably…

this guy just gave you the X. its 0.1%

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#103

Post by trevelyan » Tue, Jun 07, 2011, 8:15 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #95

trevelyan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally benefited from your shared insights into SEO here, but your reply above is glib and dismissive of a business strategy that works for a lot of people (including me). It emphasizes actively focusing on SEO and pursuing visibility in search engines instead of passively optimizing for word-of-mouth and visibility in channels like the App store. So no... I disagree that it would work. I think rkalla below…

You disagree that serverside software is harder to pirate than clientside software? You're wrong. I think what's happening here is that you're not following Patrick's advice to the logical conclusion he's trying to lead you to. He's not suggesting that you SEO an existing iOS application. He's suggesting that you hoist the parts of that application that are worth money into a server and require people to have paid ac…

tptacek,

This comment is not meant to be dismissive, but your advice is imho a recipe for dismal placement in the App store. It makes it much less likely that anyone will find this guy's application and will produce a bunch of 1-star rankings from those who do because "app didn't work" or "requires Internet" or "why do i have to register on server after buying app". Your proposal for server authentication also risks violating Apple's new TOS regarding subscription apps unless he moves to in-app payments and goes freemium anyway (which is part of the more realistic solution).

There is a non-obvious case to be made that this guy's Asteroids clone should be a paid webapp, but the suggestion is so counterintuitive to actual iOS marketers that summarizing all advice to the contrary as "blah blah blah" is not helpful. And I suspect that if you or Patrick had experience developing for iOS you wouldn't be so quick to believe that any strategy that doesn't involve tethering applications is "pointless and exasperating".

Piracy does not help with pagerank, but total downloads do wonders for visibility in the App Store as do the "others also downloaded" buttons. If Patrick is advising killing that marketing channel, he will need to come up with something else and if it isn't SEO I don't know what it is. This guy needs to leverage his freeloaders to promote the visibility of his stuff and be smarter about providing people with opportunities to pay him. For an example of a better approach look at the strategy of this company. Not only does free promote paid, but the price of the paid app is higher because it doesn't need to compete with other paid games for visibility in general channels:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/sillysoft-games/id29253857...

Re: "My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

#104

Post by adolph » Wed, Jun 15, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #61

adolph wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is that a particular iPhone can't run around to different people's computers slurping the apps they bought on different iTunes accounts. It can only sync with one computer/iTunes account. For example, my spouse and I could use the same purchased apps (if we used the same stuff) since we share a single iTunes account and library. I could not sync with my next door neighbor and use all their apps at the same…

No need for single iTunes account and library. There is home sharing feature in iTunes and it allows to share apps simply by dragging and dropping.

Yeah, we started sharing the library before home sharing. I've been thinking about splitting them and using home sharing but the current pain (oh, will you quit iTunes, I need to sync) is less than the pain of changing how we approach things (oh, I need to copy these songs to my Library to put them on the phone).