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Comments: 268 +- Games: iPhone Game Piracy "the Rule Rather Than the Exception" on Friday November 20, @07:52PM
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by
Soulskill
on Friday November 20, @07:52PM
from the hey-some-people-can't-afford-that-99-cents dept.
from the hey-some-people-can't-afford-that-99-cents dept.
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An anonymous reader writes "Many game developers don't think of the iPhone as being a system which has extensive game piracy. But recent comments by developers and analysts have shown otherwise, and Gamasutra speaks to multiple parties to evaluate the size of the problem and whether there's anything that can be done about it. Quoting: 'Greg Yardley confirms that getting ripped off by pirates is the rule rather than the exception. Yardley is co-founder and CEO of Manhattan-based Pinch Media, a company that provides analytic software for iPhone games. ... "What we've determined is that over 60% of iPhone applications have definitively been pirated based on our checks," he reveals, "and the number is probably higher than that." While it's impossible to estimate how much money developers are losing, it involves more than the price of the game, he says. "What developers lose is not necessarily the sale," he explains, "because I don't believe pirates would have bought the game if they hadn't stolen it. But when there is a back-end infrastructure associated with a game, that is an ongoing incremental cost that becomes a straight loss for the developer."'"
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Submission: iPhone Piracy: The Inside Story by Anonymous Coward
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Conflicted (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple reality.
All software sucks, it's just a matter of matching strengths and weaknesses to your own needs.
War of the memes (Score:5, Insightful)
What's up the past few days. Stories about iPhone development sucks, Android development rules, no wait Android development sucks and iPhone development rules, no wait iPhone owners are a bunch of pirates.
What you are seeing is a battle over memespace, two sides trying to convince a technical populace that the other side sucks.
Happily slashdot readers are more savvy than this, and there are well reasoned responses in each of these articles that lay out what is going on, despite very misleading article summaries - like this story implying 60% of iPhone users pirate, when in reality it's about 5% and the 60% figure is only the percentage of apps that have pirated VERSIONS, which says nothing about number of users who are pirating any given app.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Finally (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice to see a big name admit that 1 pirated copy != 1 lost sale.
Now let's see if we can get someone on the other side to admit that software houses lose a lot of revenue from piracy, even if 1 pirate copy != 1 lost sale.
News at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
Our headlines today:
* DRM doesn't work
* People are assholes
* iPhone the same as any other platform shocker
Re:News at 11 (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all piracy is because people are assholes. See, iTunes is not available in my country (Argentina) without an international credit card. They won't even take my paypal account unless it has a valid US address. Most of the time they won't even allow me to subscribe to free podcasts (!!!).
So I went to a Mac Store and asked them if they sold Gift cards, nope...
Then I contacted the company who makes the app I wanted (I was willing to pay the $2 they asked, using paypal) but nope... They only do business through Apple.
Ok, screw them. I just downloaded the app, uploaded it to my iPhone and run it.
Something similar happens with the Wiistore. And don't get me started about PC games, that cost several times their US cost.
No wonder piracy is so widespread.
Parent
Yes but there's more to it than that. (Score:5, Interesting)
My company also tracks iphone piracy rates. And while the piracy rate is in line with the OP there's more to it than that. Apps with demos generally have lower piracy rates. Also we track usage rate, pirates tend to only launch once or twice, as if they're sampling the app. So it's not as bad as the article makes it sound.
Re:Yes but there's more to it than that. (Score:4, Informative)
*Not that I condone that sort of thing, but people are used to that kind of control on mobile platforms anyway.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Compensated source = cooked numbers ?? (Score:4, Informative)
"Yardley is co-founder and CEO of Manhattan-based Pinch Media, a company that provides analytic software for iPhone games...."
I'm sure reporting greater pirating numbers is in Mr. Yardley's financial interest as well. Not to say there isn't pirating going on but when the entity reporting the pirating number derives a living from said numbers I tend to be a bit skeptical. It is like the RIAA's number's, there has to be some basis for truth in them, but you can rest assured they are massaged and slanted to show the greatest impact to the paying customer...
Re:What benefit can they derive? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no reason at all not to believe these numbers, as Pinch Media gains nothing by the numbers being higher or lower
Not so. Pinch media make money from apps which sell advertising space. Apps which are ad funded don't care about (or even benefit from) piracy.
As such, it's in Pinch Media's interests to make piracy seem more common, because app devs will make ad supported apps, which means Pinch get more business.
Parent
Losing to Piracy, or, Over-Estimating App Value? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whenever a developer claims to be "losing money" to piracy, one has to wonder... are the developers losing this money trying to combat piracy directly (lawsuits and DRM tactics), or is it simply a case of self-flattery, where the developer is grossly over-estimating the value of their software, thinking "If my software isn't great, then why would anyone pirate it?"
Perhaps its time for some self-reflection. You are just another pawn in an industry wide problem spanning over 30 years. Chances are, you and your app aren't special. The piracy was likely nothing more than a bulk job handled indescriminately with no concern for you or anyone else.
Re:Losing to Piracy, or, Over-Estimating App Value (Score:5, Interesting)
the developer is grossly over-estimating the value of their software, thinking "If my software isn't great, then why would anyone pirate it?"
I once worked for a small company with a semi-popular application. Sales were almost all of the form of pay pal purchases off the website. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough to pay one developer. But piracy was a huge problem. It was quite obvious that more than 90% of the copies running were pirated.
The company changed directions and started bundling the application for free with online services. The service provider would pay for the application and the customers would get the software for use only with the service. But the company was worried about piracy, so they asked me to write DRM that tied the application to the service. They would continue to sell an untied version off the website, but with "call home" DRM (it's an internet app, so it's not quite as draconian as it sounds). I very reluctantly agreed (i.e., I had to decide whether it was worth quitting over -- if I had to do it again, I'd quit).
The end result was that all piracy stopped. In fact, all usage stopped. Instead of selling 2 or 3 copies a day off the website, not one copy of the DRM version was ever sold. And due to very poor choices of service provider partners, the company received no revenue at all. Within a year the company had folded.
The thing is, the new version was head and shoulders better than then non-DRMed version. And the DRM was truly unobtrusive (think DRM in WoW). Paying customers wouldn't even know it existed. But sales are generated by popularity, not quality. Piracy, like it or not generates popularity. The company was very small and had no means of effective advertising. By cutting off the pirates, they shut off their only revenue source.
What always kills me about this story is this: The app we were making was *perfect* for an open software model. Ask the service providers to each spend a small amount of money to cover development and give them the app for free. Give them branding in the app to thank them for their help. But the "sales" people were always quick to point out that the service providers they found had no money and couldn't afford to pay us up front. How on earth did we fail? :-P
Parent
60%! I feel the need to call shenanigans..... (Score:2)
That being said, it would appear that pirating apps from the app store, while not hard, would take at least a little more technical know how than the average iphone user has or is willing to put up with.
S
Re: (Score:2)
I jailbroke, played with it for a while, then reinstalled and went back to my comfort zone. I find it hard to believe that the majority of my fellow iPhone users didn't do the same. We like it Apple, and we like it simple. We don't pirate, and we all have fresh breath. Right?
60% of apps, not 60% of users (Score:3, Insightful)
So jailbreaking an iphone, which takes almost no technical know how is done by 10% of users and pirating apps, which takes more know how, results in 60% of games being pirated?
The thing is it's very, very easy to automate this pirating. That is to say, the supply of pirated apps is what the 60% figure comes from - 60% of apps they track have pirated versions run at one time or another.
It's not saying 60% of users are running pirated apps, or that any one app has 60% of users running a pirated version.
I wou
Hey, Submitter! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't change the meaning of the article when summarizing.
over 60% of iPhone applications have definitively been pirated
as submitted
60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated.
(as written in the article, bolding included)
Let's "reverse-bold" that...
60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated.
(emphasis mine)
It might be relevant to non-pinch-using apps, it might not. But let's not delete that relevant bit of data.
Re:Hey, Submitter! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Shhhh, (Score:5, Informative)
he explains, "because I don't believe pirates would have bought the game if they hadn't stolen it...."
Don't tell the MPAA or RIAA that.
They will get all uppity in your shit!
On the Pinch Media Report (Score:3, Informative)
The way the numbers are reported is a bit misleading. “Of paid apps that use Pinch Media’s services, 60% have been pirated. Of those pirated apps, 34% of all installs are the pirated version.” This means that maybe only 20% of installs are pirated. Those numbers are actually really good for software.
The way the first picture is reported is also misleading. It’s titled, “Application Piracy is Global” and then it shows a graph of jailbroken iphones. Jailbreaking is not the same as pirating. Jailbreaking is what you need to unbind an iphone from the app store, and the first step to unlocking an iphone. Since iPhones are were not sold in China until just recently, almost all their iPhones have to be imported from other carriers, so it is no surprise that an abnormally high percentage in China are jailbroken.
Judging from the graph, it appears that roughly 10-15% of all iphones have been jailbroken. “About 38% [of jailbroken iphones] have used a pirated application.” “34% of all installs are cracked” This means that roughly 4-6% of iphone users have ever used a pirated application. And yet somehow, those 4-6% of iphones account for 34% of all installs? I’m a bit skeptical.
“Pirated apps on jailbroken iPhones crash more, which may be why they’re used less.” I’m really skeptical about this interpretation. That graph is really really zoomed in. Crash rates for pirated applications appear to crash only 0.5%-1.3% more sessions than a regular app. That’s fairly rare. That’s like one in every 80 to 200 sessions results in an “extra” crash.
This blog post is either really poorly written or the author has an intentional bias that they want to express.
On a related note, I hope this gets more app developers to make “lite” versions of their software so people can try them out. The conversion numbers are much better than the alternative.
Here's the flaws in their reasoning (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, wait a second
- In order to pirate an iphone app, you have to jailbreak your phone. Only a small percentage of the user base have done this
- By measuring the total number of "phone homes", you can figure out how many copies of your app are out in the wild, INCLUDING copies on jailbroken phones.
So if you find out that your app has 1000 copies in the wild.
600 of those copies are on the jailbroken iphones that make up maybe 5% of the total phones.
Therefore, you're out the revenue from those 600 copies? Nope, because if those users hadn't hacked their phones, they probably WOULD NOT have paid for your app. The reason you only have 400 sales in this scenario is that the 95% of users who are eligible to buy it weren't interested enough in your app. The jailbreaking users just grab whatever they want whenever they want, but wouldn't behave like that if they had to pay.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly.
Even if you ignore for the fact that owners of jailbroken iPhones are even less likely to pay for apps, i.e. assume the same percentage as normal iPhones.
So 400 apps sold to 95% normal iPhone owners. Extrapolate to the remaining 5% means 400x5/95~=21 people with jailbroken iPhone would would have bought the app if cracked version not available.
So it means at most ~5% (21/400) of "sales lost". Less if you take in account that fact that jailbreakers are not likely to buy any app anyway.
Strange that
Something smells of fish... (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, I and almost ALL of my friends have iPhones. We're all geeks and I think almost all of us have jailbroken our phones at least once and I for one have kept up and stayed jailbroken since the very beginning. We're not the sort who wouldn't pirate an app or two, if nothing just to try it out, but so far as I know NONE of us have. Apparently it's not very hard, I've heard there are torrents out there full of them, but come on - for .99 why bother? Hell I even bought the Navigon mapping app for full price and THAT stung! But pirating never crossed my mind and I know that the two other friends of mine that have it have paid for it too. If the rate of pirating were really as high as 60% then I'm pretty sure my friends would be chattering about it quite a bit or at least asking me about it. I will admit that with all of this talk about it I'm tempted to go learn more about how to do it and maybe try an app or two but most games these days have a trial version and that has satisfied me. This isn't like PC games that often turn out to be crap and if you watch the store you can often find apps on sale - wish there was an app to tell me about THAT! It's like MP3s, I used to pirate the heck out of them and had ripped ALL of my friends CDs and vice versa. I refused to buy anything DRM'd! Now I use Shazam to pickup on any songs I like and then about once every couple of weeks I sit down and download all the ones I like from Amazon at a buck apiece. At THAT price with no DRM it's simply not worth my while to ask around to find out who has the song and it feels good to not download it from some cheezy torrent. I might even buy a used CD once in awhile too but sorry no new ones RIAA.
So, I'm sort of the demographic that would consider this and frankly I've just not been tempted and I don't think any of the ten+ iPhone owners I know have been either. I think these guys may be pushing an agenda here, maybe next week they will release an app designed to halt this. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that's what this was about....
Android and piracy (Score:3, Informative)
Well, Android is no better, or even worse.
Almost every commercial Android application gets immediately cracked. Anyone can freely download them from links posted on public forums you can find with a simple Google search. And as far as I understand, there's even no need to jailbreak the device in order to install Android cracked software.
This is really bad for developers and I really hope that eventually, Apple and Google will find a solution to prevent this.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder if maybe he is being clever with his phrasing, and instead of 60% of all app installations being cases of piracy, the fact he is trying to state is that of the apps in the app store (more probably, the apps that they instrument), 60% of them have been pirated at least once.
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No, he's stating that (at least for games) 60% or more of your users are pirating the app. He's also right.
He's not actually "Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated. This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking. When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked — in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads."
Re:clue for the non-iphone-user (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually reading the article, I was right, quoting from approximately the fifth paragraph:
Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated. This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking. When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked -- in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads.
He says that for apps that have seen piracy, an average of 34% of the installs are pirated.
So the 60% was just their way of stating the biggest possible percentage.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I think that comes to about one third of the 60%, meaning that 20% of all the installs of apps that use Pinch are pirated. I assume that Pinch charges for its library, so they would likely be tracking few, if any, free apps. They may be in some low-priced apps, but probably not that many of those, either. So that 20% may well amount to something like 1% or fewer of all installs. On my phone, free or 99-cent apps comprise roughly 95% of the installed base; I know of only one that uses Pinch (ou
Re:clue for the non-iphone-user (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:clue for the non-iphone-user (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:clue for the non-iphone-user (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Writing it yourself isn't always possible (Score:5, Insightful)
I encourage would-be-pirates people to simply write it themselves.
The same could be said about music, but that doesn't go over so well :)
With software, United States case law recognizes methods of "reverse engineering", or copying only the (uncopyrightable) functionality of a program without copying the (copyrighted) expression of the program. Music and other non-software works don't have a corresponding exception; even if you "write it yourself", you might still infringe. George Harrison found out about this the hard way when he wrote a song only to learn later that he would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to someone else who had written the same song years earlier (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music).
Parent
Re:clue for the non-iphone-user (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is, of course, that Slashdotters, as a general rule, understand what goes into programming an application. We have empathy and respect for programmers for the simple reason that for some of us, it's our profession.
Not so much with musicians. We (again -- as a general rule) characterize them as untalented and spoiled. Some people are more equal than others, and in the eyes of many Slashdotters, musicians are the least equal of all.
We don't pirate applications because we respect the work that programmers perform. However, we elevate music piracy to a social cause worthy of Rosa Parks. Hurting musicians? No -- we're putting them in their place. They should get a day job! They should make a living selling t-shirts! They should just stop being so greedy! We deserve to use modern technology to copy their work, but how dare they try to use modern technology to make a living?
And if that's not enough of a rationalization of music piracy, we're eager to suggest others. Just watch.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That part is true.
I play the Guitar and most people who actually care about music do not manage to make it anywhere as the industry is set up to support generic factory produced music, not anything that is actually created. Instead of going to the latest Shitney Spears concert, try finding a local bar that has a live Jazz or Rock band playing and you will quickly notice the difference, granted these
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's unfortunate that the truly talented musicians are giving lessons and performing at parties for less then A$500 a night.
The problem there isn't that those musicians are underpaid. $500 a night for 5 hours of work and maybe 20 hours of practice, a week, is entirely reasonable. Plenty of us make half that for an actual 40 hour week.
I'm not trying to compare the hours worked, musicians usually can't work 'more' and hence a couple of hours a week of performance does need to pay for their living expensiv
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A$20 an hour may seem reasonable. That's A$20 an hour or judging by a 40 hour week and 48 week year (standard here in AU) thats A$38,000 which is not a good wage but not a bad wage for a 20 to 25 year old.
The problem is that you need 1.6 acts per week to get that and that it takes more then 20 hours of practice to be performance ready. You're also not counting equipment which is pe
Re:clue for the non-iphone-user (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. People hear the kids practicing in the garage next door and think "music is easy." No, it isn't. If it were, everyone would make it. It's extremely time-consuming, laborious, and expensive. It is no different from software.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't that essentially indicate the apps are overpriced to begin with? (not that this is a legitimate excuse for pirating them).
The Pinchmedia report [pinchmedia.com] is a must read. It shows there is a definite link between wealth and piracy ( GDP is negatively correlated with piracy) and pirates use apps intensely for a couple of weeks then mostly abandon them which may indicate that they either lost intrest and wouldn't have bought anyway or bought it after a "trial" piracy period.
Does require a jailbroken phone, and there's more (Score:5, Insightful)
Does pirating an iphone app require a jailbroken phone?
Yes, that is the case. So that means 2-3 million devices that can potentially pirate apps (of course not all people that jailbreak do so to pirate apps), out of a field of 30 million+ devices.
If so, does that mean the "rule" is that there are more jailbroken phone users out there using these pirated applications than there are non-jailbroken phone users using them?
Not at all. This statistic is really misleading, because they are just saying that 60% total of the apps HAVE PIRATED VERSIONS. Actually I would be really surprised if it was that low, I thought it was closer to 90% since it's easily automated - but someone has to buy the app in the first place to pirate it....
But that number says nothing at all about the number of users of any application. That number is NOT saying that 60% of the users of any given app have pirated it.
However there's even more to it that that. As I said the pirating is really easily automated, so it's not like the traditional pirating where applications are really cracked - code signing is just removed. This is actually really easy for an application developer to check for and so lots of apps now check to see (a) if they are on a jailbroken device or (b) if the app is pirated or not. Lots of developers monitor that but do nothing about it, some issue gentle notices after a few weeks saying "hey, why not buy me now". So any developer that cares about the pirating can make the job a lot harder if they really want by preventing functionality on pirated copies.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Effort does not correlate with value. I can spend thirty years building something and still end up with something worthless, and I can spend half an hour building a million dollar app. It's all about ho
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that "micro-transactions" have crept into every aspect of life.
If take the time to add up all your "buck here, buck there" transactions, you may be surprised just how much you spend.
The entire system is set up to maximize impulse buys and hide the total cost of purchases by splitting it up into bits.
People go for free because it is less than $1 or 25 cents or even 1 cent. Isn't it exactly that fact why so many things are outsourced to China, India, etc? To save just a little bit on each tra
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not a defense of stealing it! Just a suggestion that the existing process -- which works pretty well -- has room for improvement.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't conflate the issue of whether the price is fair with the issue of whether a free trial is necessary.
I will agree with you that $1 is a ridiculously low price for a software application, and someone unwilling to pay that much should just not use the app.
The problem is that when producers get paid in full every time a consumer evaluates the product and decides it is unusable, they start creating products that look just good enough to try out, but don't actually work. The revenues are the same, and the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether you can afford $1 is not the same as whether something is worth $1. Would you pay $1 for me to come and punch you in the face? The amount of effort involved for me to find out where you are, get there, and punch you in the face is a lot greater than $1. The $1 cost to you is not much. But I'd be quite surprised if you actually wanted to pay me $1 to punch you in the face.
The question of worth is whether that $1 could improve your life more if spent on something else. Will your life be better
Re:definitively (sic) been pirated (Score:5, Informative)
Can't we get someone who's [sic motherfucker] first language is English to proof-read these things?
It's whose, motherfucker, not who's.
--
Brought to you by the department of abusive language correction.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic
The gist of it is that he is reproducing someone else's text who has the spelling error in it. He is showing he knows its wrong and that it is the other guy's mistake not his.
Of course, if TFA doesn't say who's in the wrong context then he's just being a smartass.