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Android Software Piracy Rampant
bednarz writes "Pirating Android apps is a longstanding problem. But it seems to be getting worse, even as Google begins to respond much more aggressively. The dilemma: protecting developers' investments, and revenue stream, while keeping an open platform. Some have argued that piracy is rampant in those countries where the online Android Market is not yet available. But a recent KeyesLabs research project suggests that may not be true: 'Over the course of 90 days, the [KeyesLabs] app was installed a total of 8,659 times. Of those installations only 2,831 were legitimate purchases, representing an overall piracy rate of over 67%.... The largest contributor to piracy, by far, is the United States providing 4,054 or about 70% of all pirated installations...'"
Otherwise, expect us to live our lives by any means necessary.
In what way is pirating an app necessary to living your life?
I remember reading a blog post by 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo, that stated that they calculated a piracy rate of 90%. That's on an independent game, that only cost $15. It's a great game, and well worth the money. There's also absolutely no DRM on the game so there's no reason to assume that people are "pirating" because they need to get around copy protection for a game they already bought. They added corrections to the blog post, later, correcting the number to around 82%. So 67% doesn't seem all that bad in comparison.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Translation: Did they give us any information that will give us any excuse to excuse the pirates?
Thank you for your advice. Since I don't believe I can interest you in a support contract for my jump and run game, I'm going to plaster it with ads as an alternative source of income.
Piracy rate is meaningless. You can have a 0% piracy rate easily, just don't release your app. The only thing that matters is revenue. You're better off having 1000 paying customers and 1,000,000,000 pirates than you are having 100 customers and no pirates at all.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But software is infinitely reproducible for next to no cost
Too bad it's not "infinitely developable" for next to no cost.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Case in point - way back in the DOS days, a friend insisted I try simcity. I though the game concept was silly, but gave it a whirl. I went on to buy Simcity 2000, Simcity 3000 Deluxe, Simcity 4 + Rush hour, and Simcity for the Wii. I also bought a few other maxis games, all stemming from that one floppy.
However, if I had had to buy the original game first, none of those sales would have happened. Not one.
Some of us *do* want to reward publishers who produce good stuff - we just don't want to get sucked in by nice artwork and a bogus description that turns into an almost-immediate lunchbag letdown.