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App Store Developer Speaks Out On Game Piracy
theguythatwrotethisthing sends in a write-up of his experience releasing an iPhone game on the App Store. By using a software flag to distinguish between high scores submitted by pirates and those submitted by users who purchased the game, the piracy rate is estimated at around 80% during the first week after release. Since a common excuse for piracy is "try before you buy," they also looked at the related iPhone DeviceIDs to see how many of the pirates went on to purchase the game. None of them did.
It seems strange to me considering the pricing and how much more convenient it is (at least IMO) to just use the App store. In fact, all the apps I've got on my iPhone are from the App store and were either free there or I paid for them.
That's not to say I'm fervently anti-piracy, I'll admit that I've downloaded a fair amount of movies, music and software in my life but it's almost always been because it was too expensive, not yet released where I live or simply much more convenient to do so.
As an example, a piece large expensive "professional" software that I want to use at home for fun or some minor non-commercial purpose isn't something I'm about to pony up $300 or whatever it costs for (I try to use open source when there is a good alternative), I've also downloaded games simply because I wasn't willing to pay full price to play it once for a few hours with a friend or two and then never play again. As for music and movies it tends to be a combination of pricing ($20 for an album I've never heard that probably only has a handful of good songs?), convenience (DRM) and it simply not being available where I live yet (woohoo, ordering Region 1 DVDs from the US). But a $4 iPhone game that can be downloaded in a minute at the click of a button? That seems pointless to me...
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I must admit that prior to the days when I had money to throw away on games as I saw fit I truly did pirate a game now and then for the sake of a trial period. I found it effective, but mainly in convincing me not to buy the game. And see, there is this unexpected factor I discovered, actually only recently, that severely impacts this chain of actions...
Basically it amounts to this: I find, all too often, that many games are not worth playing beyond the amount you normally get in a demo! I have downloaded so many demo games, especially racing or fighting games, on the PlayStation Network or XBOX Live and found that... well that was enough. To spend $60 more dollars simply to add a few levels and get the same experience was not a valuable prospect for me.
I won't try to claim that any significant portion of these piracy observations can be explained by what I'm describing. I would say it's not without merit though. In these days, there are so many games. I mean, honestly, I think there are more games released in a year than I could humanly play through in their entirety. Even filtering out the disinteresting games I would still never have the time, given work and other responsibilities, to finish anywhere near say, 10% of the releases in a year.
So to go from trial period to purchase, especially on a game that's likely a shallow me-too on the iPhone... well let's demonstrate the thought process with another nugget: I have downloaded probably 25 different "Light" games and never even tried them before I deleted them because I simply lost all interest.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
To start out with, I would like to mention that I have pirated a lot in my lifetime. I pirated more when I was unemployed and poor, because I had lots of time and less money. I still pirate some, but nowadays I also buy more now that I am earning good money. But anyway, here is my viewpoint of piracy.
Most of the excuses pirates use are just that, excuses.
* Try before you buy! It does happen, but rarely.
* Everything sucks! Then why are you pirating it in the first place?
* Damn the evil publishers!! You really believe most pirates are like that?
Want to hear a valid excuse
* It is free to pirate, so I don't have to worry about money.
Now, you will here people mention that these games aren't really that expensive. But that misses the point. There is a huge difference between cheap and free, and it affects behavior a lot. When something is free, you can consume it without feeling like you have to get value out of it. And that gains a certain amount of freedom which is very difficult to compete with if you are trying to charge for a product.
Now, the article in question I actually found was fairly unbiased. It did mention that piracy is high as soon as the game is released. This is not strange at all. As pirates have no restrictions on them in regard to money, they will play whatever they feel like. And the newest thing on the market is simply an easy target.
This may point out that Pirates generally have a lower attention span they quickly move on to the next game
This is a nice observation in the article. I would say that it isn't attention span per se. It is just that pirates have a fare wider selection of items to select from. Again, having to do with the freedom I mentioned above.
The author goes on to discuss ways to combat piracy. And here I want to mention an important thing. If you use piracy protection to fight against piracy, then you are using it wrong. If you use piracy protection to steal customers from a competing product that doesn't have piracy protection then you are doing it right.
If you fail to understand the difference, it is simple. Pirates buy products too. And they are more likely to buy something if they get value out of it beyond legal ownership. This is why authenticated multi player mode is a very efficient piracy protection mechanism. It gives the pirates something that they want to buy, without providing any negative effects on other customers (who may or may not pirate other products).
It is the same in other businesses. If a pirate has to decided between buying a CD of one artist, or attending a live performance of another artist, guess what they will choose. Same with DVD vs. movie theater.
Of course, there are always pirates that won't buy anything. Either because they have no money, or because they intend to use that money for other things. But, those are the kind of pirates that simply aren't worth spending any effort on. At best you can hope that their money habits will change over time, and that you as a developer will be a beneficiary.
Good question, which I don't have a "true" answer for.
My feeling is, as very little percentage of pirate finally bought the app after "trying it", having them downloading the app for free did not help on the sales after. Almost none of those hackers did post on blogs, Twitter, etc so it doesn't help neither.
What might have helped a bit is being listed on appulous, I guess some people are tracking the 'hacker' websites to see what's hot, and what was released recently. What might happen is people buying the app straight without going through the hacker stage. However, as I had 99.3% of hackers on the next days after it was published on appulous, which only 1% bought the app after, I would say it did not impact on my real sales.
I think Photoshop is a different case which you can't compare with mine. I agree with what you say about it, but I don't think it applies on mine (sadly ;).
http://blog.penso.info
However, as I had 99.3% of hackers on the next days after it was published on appulous, which only 1% bought the app after, I would say it did not impact on my real sales.
So your real sales were 0.7% and pirating brought 0.993%, effectively more than doubling your sales, and you say it had no impact? Are you serious?