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.

Comments

Didn't think App Store piracy was that big

[mikael_j]

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

Re:Didn't think App Store piracy was that big

[BorgDrone]

(..) 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. (...) But a $4 iPhone game that can be downloaded in a minute at the click of a button? That seems pointless to me...

Same here, I've spent more money on software in the year I've had my iPhone than in the decade before that. If I can buy a great game like Monkey Island for a few euro's it's not even worth the effort to pirate it.

I would happily pay an honest price for (on-demand) movies and series if only it was as convenient as buying app-store apps and if it would actually be available over here. For example: the new Stargate series, it'll be years before it's on TV here, and they'll probably mess up the order (I have no clue why they do this, but they can's seem to ever show any series in the correct order over here), stop halfway through a season, broadcast it at random times, etc. It's almost as if they don't want people to follow the series.

Re:Another example

[happy]

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 ;).