Angry Birds Boss Credits Piracy For Popularity Boost 321
An anonymous reader writes "Mikael Hed is the CEO of Rovio Mobile, the company behind popular mobile puzzle game Angry Birds. At the Midem conference Monday, Hed had some interesting things to say about how piracy has affected the gaming industry, and Rovio's games in particular: '"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy." Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans. When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day." ... "We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have," he said. "If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow."'"
Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
Piracy is one of the greatest forms of advertising. In some businesses, it's called "word of mouth". Growing up, many of the products I was introduced to, and subsequently became loyal customers of, was thanks to "piracy" of one sort or another. Back then, nobody saw it as a bad thing. The rule of thumb was copy all that you want as long as you don't try to make a profit from it or pass it off as your own.
When I was younger and still listened to mainstream music, my favorite band was Metallica. I heard them on the radio a few times, but I didn't know who they were. That is, until one of my friends loaned me a cassette tape. Then, a series of them. I was hooked. I bought every CD I could find (even though I already had the tapes), and I tuned into every radio station that played them. From what I understand, they owe a lot of their success to piracy. It's a shame that they attacked Napster. By the way, has anybody heard anything from them lately? I wonder how their anti-piracy campaign is working?
It wasn't just music. Everything from software and video games to free food came along my way, and I often rewarded the company with my business. I was always more loyal to companies that treated me like I was a prize to be one, and not a resource to be manipulated. I hope that the media companies realize this before we lose too many of our rights. As for me, I've already given up on them.
Well, well. (Score:5, Interesting)
Gotta Test Drive A Car Too! (Score:5, Interesting)
My friend downloaded a cracked and pirated copy of angry birds, and he liked it so much (as did his wife) that they both purchased the full copy of the game. He sent it to me, and I purchased it also (having tried the free version and went Meh...) but probably would not have, had I not gotten a chance to see all of the levels, and really appreciate the game!
Probably 75 percent of the games that I have ever purchased, I have played a pirated version first not the demo. Especially when you can get all of the levels or vehicles unlocked and use all of the different weapons and just give it a good run through to be sure it's really worth having.
If it's not worth buying, it's not worth keeping the pirated version around either!
Cheers:)
Re:Microsoft has been doing it for years (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though they would probably never admit it
They did it involuntarily.
Microsoft already knew this... (Score:3, Interesting)
...which is why they supplied keys for their OSes separately to the media. Why they went for hooky VLKs and those distributing them instead of the end users using them. Establish the user base and lock them in, when you get the planned obsolescence running properly, as they have now, then you've got a captive audience and every fucking penny they will ever earn for the rest of their lives.
Re:Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
They didn't just attack Napster, they called everybody who listened to music, thieves. That was the drummer Ulrich who said that.
At which point I made a public event of incinerating hundreds of Pounds worth of Metallica merchandise just to make a statement:
YOU DO NOT SHIT WHERE YOU EAT.
Re:Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been a web and graphic designer for over 10 years and have pirated countless copies of photoshop, dreamweaver, flash etc over the years for personal use beginning in the days when i was at uni. Since I started working in the industry every position I have ever worked has always had fully licenced software and I have been involved in several purchasing decisions where I strongly advocated buying new licences for the business for new staff etc. If I had never pirated photoshop in my earlier poor uni days I would never have had the skills to get a job as a web designer. Since then both I and Adobe have benefited from that initial piracy monetarily and continue to benefit.
If effective restrictive DRM has been in place or criminal penalties highly draconian when I was considering whether to pirate photoshop I would instead have trained myself on Corel (an inferior but similar product) and would be working at places where they had corel licences not photoshop. I would be trained in a crappier product and Adobe would have much less money as a result.
I really wanted to watch Van Helsing the other day (Score:5, Interesting)
I really wanted to watch Van Helsing the other day. I just wanted to watch it, not own it. I've recently had a cleanse and sold all my DVDs to a second hand store, only keeping my wild life documentary Blu-Rays as I got a bit fed up with having hundreds of DVDs cluttering up the flat.
After scouting around, on Amazon it is about £8 for the Van Helsing Blu-Ray, on iTunes it is about £8 to buy/download forever Van Helsing.
I'm not a fan of buying movies to keep like that, I just wanted to watch it once, not keep it on a HDD for the rest of my life, i figured to me it's worth £1 to download/stream and view once.
Lovefilms do PPV at £3.49 for most films, Van Helsing wasn't available and that's more than I wanted to pay anyway. They also do unlimited streaming for £5pm.
Netflix do unlimited streaming for £6pm but their site didn't seem to show Van Helsing and there wasn't a one off option.
iTunes only lets you buy, not one off stream and that's the same price as the Blu-Ray.
BitTorrent on the other hand had it readily available for free, but I don't pirate so watched my copy of Planet Earth instead.
Am I unreasonable in wanting to watch once an 8 year old film that had a budget of $160 million and broke $300 million in the box office for £1?
Is it unreasonable to not want to pay monthly subscriptions to a service that doesn't have the film I want to watch anyway which forces me to watch more films than I want in order to get value for my money?
Is it me that's broken, or their business model?
Appstore economics. (Score:4, Interesting)
Rovio's attitude stinks, because it just runs on the same lines as all appstore economics.
Rovio have made millions, but they're the exception -- most mobile apps get few or no sales. The profits in mobile apps, spread across all writers, would amount to a pretty pitiful wage. Losses to lower-order app developers mean loss of (already rubbish) income. Losses to Rovio mean little or nothing, considering the scale they're on.
Advertising? Well, three things:
1) It's well established that piracy tends to favour known and popular materials over unknown and unpopular, in all media. It therefore serves to further entrench the established players -- so it's great for Rovio, not much use for John A B Smith Software.
2) The entrenched players in mobile apps are supported by their appstore ratings, compiled from legal downloads. Even 100,000,000 downloads of a pirated game wouldn't get it above Angry Birds in the appstore charts, so it wouldn't get commercial discovery and success.
3) Angry Birds is a brand, and the toys and cartoons make lots of money. Most apps aren't merchandisable. PocketPlayPool -- are you going to market branded balls? GTCarsXXVII -- the manufacturers retain all likeness rights to their own models, so there's nothing to market. Same goes for EAProSportofchoice20xx and sports personalities/teams.
So what Rovio is supporting is market conditions that favour their particular product, which is very different from market conditions that ensure a robust and healthy competitive environment, or that ensure innovation and development.
Re:Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding Metallica:
They actually did learn from their experience. Death Magnetic was leaked on youtube days before the album came out. Metallica was so blown away by the positive reaction that they didnt DMCA any of the songs(the studio lawyers did for the first few uploads, but Metallica put a stop to it and let the leak continue). Death Magnetic went on to sell very well, and Metallica acknowledged the leak was a good thing and that they look at things differently now.
Re:Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
>If Gimp was a viable alternative to Photoshop for professional users they would be using it. I use Gimp for my small modificationos of private pictures, but I sure as hell miss the more advanced plugins from Photoshop.
Did you try installing the advanced plugins for GIMP ? This argument is 5 years out of date and I'm getting sick of it.
PS. I'm a professional art photographer (as in published in international magazines including Marie Claire) who uses exclusively free software on Linux. And I have never had an editing task or post-processing idea that UFRaw+Gimp couldn't handle with incredible ease and exceptional power. Photoshop hasn't been better than gimp in many, many years - it has ONE advantage only: familiarity. People like you know where the plugins ARE - and you expect it all to come shipped with the main program. Gimp ships the core functionality with the main program - the advanced plugins are shipped separately - so users doing website logos don't need to muddle through menus of plugins only useful to photographers (and vice versa).
Name ANY photoshop plugin and then type it's name +gimp alternative into google and I guarantee you'll find it.
In fact, I actually tried photoshop the other day since I was not at home and wanted to do a quick edit on a friend's pc which had windows and photoshop but no gimp. After half an hour of fruitlessly searching for the feature I wanted in the unfamiliar menu structure I gave up and downloaded gimp for windows and the plugin I needed.
You learned photoshop, you haven't learned gimp. And if like me, you had done the opposite, you would be saying the opposite. The difference is just that there are a lot more people like you . There is no real difference in quality between the programs - but if I had to wager one and with my clearly stated bias I would say gimp is the higher quality one.
Re:That's unpossible! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or your PR dept. (Rovio is lying) (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that Rovio is lying, they specifically told XDA to remove modded versions of their games that block ads and remove copyright protection. They did this several times. This is a PR stunt, pure and simple. They are saying "PIRACY IS GOOD" while mumbling under their breath "for our competitors hahaha"
Or, more specifically they are saying piracy is fine as long as their in-app purchases, advertising, and merchandising are all making money. Basically they are saying they aren't concerned about their game being a loss leader. What they have essentially just admitted is their games have little to no value other than as a method to pull a consumer into their other product bases. He's pretending that he's pro-piracy when really they have just shifted strategy towards the MMO "freemium" model.
Some proof: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=838184 [xda-developers.com] (there are several cases of this happening, with XDA mods openly admitting they had been asked not to let these apps out there)
Ok guys, I said I would look into improving Angry Birds and I did All ads are gone, and I optimized the app for better performance! Enjoy everyone, let me know what you think of it!!!! Also, please vote in the poll if you can! Thank you
Thanks to: Creators of the game!
Link down as requested by developers
Piracy may cause publicity, but it doesn't come free. Anyone who says it's free PR is either deluding themselves or an idiot. Was some piracy good for their bottom line? Sure, probably. But they put the kibosh on it when it stopped being PR, and started cutting into ad sales.
FWIW I am not a game dev, so dont bother painting the naysayers as disgruntled devs with inferior products. That's as presumptuous BS as the RIAA saying they lose 100 trillion to piracy.
Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time a movie is released on DVD or shown in the theaters it's copyright date is extended. This is part of the reason, other than making more money, DIsney does it's "Before it goes back in the vault" marketing: probably the second part of CD box sets too. Before copyright law was changed to allow home movie releases to extend copyright, they would release the film in theaters about every ten years. Like I said, it's the second part to the reason other than making more money. A convenience they lobbied congress for.
Re:Piracy: Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)