Developer Drops Game Price To $0 Citing Android Piracy 433
hypnosec writes with news of a curious way of fighting piracy. From the article: "Android based devices are being activated at the rate of million a day and users are downloading apps and games at a rate never seen before. Despite these promising stats, developers of Android based games and apps are not really keen on porting games and apps that have been successful on iOS to Android. Why? Rampant piracy on Android! Madfinger Games has joined the long list of developers who have recently turned their paid Android based game, Dead Trigger, to a free one. Originally priced at $0.99 on Play Store, the first person shooter game is now available for free . The iOS version of the game still costs $0.99 and hasn't been made free."
Zero-cost, but certainly not Free Software; one has to wonder whether Open Source games with a "donation" build in the store would do better than proprietary games with upfront costs.
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:1, Interesting)
Since when did iOS stay on top? Android steam rolled it in the smartphone market and is about to do the same to tablets.
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also because, for developers, it means not having to deal with Google's open, flexible approach in Android to everything the Apple controls with an iron fist in iOS (especially when it comes to the App Store vs. the Android Marketplace).
More than three billion dollars paid to iOS developers. How much money has ended up in Android developers' pockets?
Re:Just wondering (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure would be nice to have a "tip jar" donation button. *click* *click* *click* I sure would be sending quarters by the dozens...concept has been around for decades...
Re:Because, you know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing keeping iOS apps from being pirated is the "jail" system. JB an iPhone, slap on a certain app [1] via adding a shady repo to Cydia, and start leeching.
Android is not built with just keeping people away from root as the single source of protection. Apps have the LVL functions to check if they are legit or not. In Jelly Bean, apps are encrypted per device and mounted via a loopback filesystem on the fly.
The reason why iOS apps have a less pirate rate is because in some countries where piracy is rampant, Android is available on the inexpensive devices. Where piracy goes, malware goes, so that is why we heard about malware running loose in Asian markets before it ever reared its head on US or European shores. iOS tends to be on more expensive phones [2], so generally people who can afford the phone can generally afford apps.
All and all, it isn't the OS that is the issue here. Android has a more robust security mechanism than iOS. However, Apple does a lot of work in being the gatekeeper, and ensuring their walls are high and stay high (especially with the fact that on newer iDevices that one can't save SHSH blobs on, all jailbreaks can be just one restore away from being gone and gone for good until a new one is made after Apple does an iOS update.)
[1]: The Dev Team and most people who use JB functionality abhor the pirates, because there are a lot of legit uses for a jailbroken device and pirating attacks the JB ecosystem as a whole. If they could block the pirate apps, they would, but there will be someone who would "jailbreak the jailbreak", so it would be pointless.
[2]: Expensive on a world basis. Just taking price comparisons in the US is different because in a lot of places, phones are not subsidized, so the user has to pay the entire cost. That is why the low end Huwei and ZTE phones are extremely popular.
Valve should be paying attention (Score:0, Interesting)
Linux users tend to be more technically skilled, and cheaper than regular Windows users. I bet the piracy rate with the Linux client will be much higher than the Windows version.
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:5, Interesting)
Android apps on both platforms are pirated 2,300% more often for the Android version vs the iOS version
Where do you get this figure? It sounds absurd on the face of it (and the number is cited in a way to sound bigger, "2,300%" is 23 times - which I still don't accept without a credible source). Jailbreaking is far more common among those I know with iPhones than rooting is among those I know with Android phones. I don't know anyone who is willing to admit to pirating Android apps, and I know several different personal circles who traffic in pirated iOS apps.
I wonder if Android is either easier to figure out who pirated vs who didn't, or if something about the Android platform falsely inflates these "pirated" numbers. Most articles I've read that talk about Android pirating do nothing to describe how they meter this, so any reporting on it at all is specious as far as I'm concerned.
Re:There is - far less (Score:5, Interesting)
People must be F'in cheap if they aren't willing to spend 99 cents. If I see a Kindle book for 99 cents I just grab it; I'm not wasting time trying to find a free pirate version. (shrug). So much for the "We would buy your product if it were cheap enough" excuse. It's been officially debunked.
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:3, Interesting)
In the spirit of anecdotal evidence, at work there is a cluster of Android geeks. They each spend a couple hours each day talking about this torrent with all the latest software, hacked so you can sideload it for free. In one to one conversations with this group, they all admit that they NEVER once paid for an App. They feel that they are entitled to install as much non-refundable software as they can.
My little circle of iPhone users, only one has jail broken his phone, and he still buys a lot of apps.
Re:Gimmick? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if Google's store does this, but when you look at an App that uses in-store purchases, it shows you the most popular purchases. This has helped me find those sorts of games and apps (ie, the "free" apps that are not really free) and steer clear of them.
Re:Ripp off! :-( (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a specific person; the public as a whole.
If I sa my truckload of dirt costs a million dollars, and the public at large says it is worth at most 100 dollars, there is no way I can equitably sell my dirt. If I sell it for 100 dollars, I feel cheated, and consider the deal unequitable.
The cost to dig the dirt is inconsequential. The dirt could very well have cost a million to dig. It could be fabulously rich in platinum ore or something. The problem is the perception of value. If your product is percieved as cheap, and of little value, you will never reach equity in the transaction.
There are two things you can do:
1) don't sell high value dirt for 100 dollars. (High value games at .99 dollars.)
2) seek to improve public awareness so that people understand what they are getting, and why your dirt costs what it does.
If the second option incurs a cost sufficient that it negates any tangible value in getting the equitable price accepted, (yes, you start selling dirt for a million dollars, but it costs trillions of dollars to educate the public, making the effort wasted) it is completely absurd economically as an option, leaving only option #1. Don't sell high value dirt. Only sell cheap dirt, because it is all people will buy.
See for instance, my own views about the price of games.
I am completely unwilling to pay 60$ for a game. I will pay at most 45$, and that had better be epic in every sense of the word. I hold this assertion because:
I make 30k a year. This tabulates out to around 14$/hr. The equivalent of my life I expend to obtain your game is a little over 4 hours. Is your game worth 4 hours of my life? I don't believe it is. You might invest weeks or months of your life to produce the game-- no contest. The question is if it is equitable to demand 4hrs of average time spent working from the thousands of people you intend to sell it to. For the sake of argument, let's say you spent 2 years making it. (Straight up, nonstop, no sleep, total time spent == 2 years.) That is 17520 hours. At 4hrs per person, you would break parity at 4380 buyers. The average game sells millions of copies. At 1 million copies sold, that is a markup over parity for your time of 228%. Unless there are that many people involved in production, (which I don't see in the end credits...) that price is inflated. Usually games with the 60$ price point sell far more than that. Usually in the 5 to 6 million unit numbers. That comes closer to 1140 people spending 2 years of their life, nonstop, to necessitate that price, assuming equal exchange of time.
It is important to note: I do not consider your time to be more expensive than mine. I am angineer, who works in avionics. I am simply not union. My wage is equitable. If your rate of pay is necessary to be higher to have a decent quality of living, it is because your local economy suffers higher inflation than mine. By demanding the higher price as a flat rate instead of pricing for the local economy, you are expecting me to accept a bad deal. End of discussion on that point. If you had developed it locally, you would not have been paid as much for your time. Demanding that I subsidize your higher cost of living is unethical. My money is worth more to me than yours is. I expect to compartively more for it than you do. If you make 60k a year (twice what I do) you should adjust the price you think your game is worth against my pay grade and local economy's buying power. You will find that for the same equity you are demanding, you would have to be paying 120$ for your games. If you feel this is unequitable, congratulations. Now you know why I won't pay that price.
I am happy to pay at most 45$. To your buying power, that is a 90$ game. It had better be damned good.
Blanket price setting sets unrealistic prices, which people refuse to pay. Their refusal to pay that price is NOT unreasonable. The blanket pricing *IS*.
I don't care that your home costs a million dollars. Your home here, of comparable v
Re:There is - far less (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, not keeping your mouth shut about the piracy, and suddenly announcing you're giving your game away because of all the "piracy" may get you some publicity that will increase your in-app income by even more than continued sales would have done. It's possible, and obviously it's what these guys are banking on.
And the beauty of that is there doesn't have to be any real level of piracy for this ploy to work.
Their refusal to reveal actual piracy numbers pretty much lends credence to this possibility.
Re:There is - far less (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:There is - far less (Score:4, Interesting)
Buy your music from independant artists and labels, not the RIAA goons and their "artists". You can support music without supporting the RIAA.
Pirating RIAA music doesn't hurt anyone, but buying non-RIAA music hurts the RIAA. They aren't really against piracy, they full well know that piracy doesn't cost them anything. Their faux battle against piracy is because file sharing is the independants' means of getting their music in front of the public. The RIAA has radio, they don't. The fight against piracy is really a battle against their competetion. If you buy two indie CDs, that's money you don't have to buy an RIAA CD.
I didn't RTFA, but these devs seem clueless. If they're going to pirate rather than paying a buck, either they're all dirt-poor (unlikely) or the legit version is in some way inferior to the paid-for version.
Giving it away "because of piracy" when some have actually PAID for a few is absolute idiocy. That said, Apogee made a similar mistake when they put DN1 and DN2 bundled with DN3D. I was pissed off, and wrote them abouut it. I'd already paid for 1 and 2! I was getting less value than those who hadn't bought 1 and 2.
It's easy to blame piracy, piracy makes a good scapegoat for poor sales of a crappy product, or poor sales after you've angered your paying customers.