Angry Birds Boss Credits Piracy For Popularity Boost

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Angry Birds Boss Credits Piracy For Popularity Boost

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @07:08PM from the easier-to-do-that-when-you're-successful dept.

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."'"

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Tomorrow's Headline by TemperedAlchemist · 2012-01-31 19:11 · Score: 5, Funny

Rovio Mobile indicted for taking part in the Mega Upload conspiracy.
1. Re:Tomorrow's Headline by davester666 · 2012-01-31 21:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Once his company goes public, and the stock price takes a tiny little dip, suddenly at the next investors meeting it becomes "Piracy is the devil's works!"
  
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2. Re:Tomorrow's Headline by Jafafa+Hots · 2012-01-31 23:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Desperate for cash seems to be the standard business model these days though.
  They can have billions, but they're still desperate for more.
  
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  This space available.
Piracy: Free Advertising by kainosnous · 2012-01-31 19:20 · 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.

--
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
1. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by Wattos · 2012-01-31 19:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It is.
  Once you enter the professional world (e.g. get a job in that business) you become part of the decision process on which software the company should purchase. Since you will have already gathered experience in photoshop, the company might be more inclined to go with that instead of GIMP.
  Simalarly, it is easier to find people with the relevant skills. E.g. if it becomes hard to find people with photoshop skills, the business which change their applications, so that it is easier to find people with the correct skillset.
  So you see, it does benefit them in one way or another.
2. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by Stormwatch · 2012-01-31 19:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Home users are not Adobe's clientele: who would ever pay $2600 for a software suite? Well, if you work with graphics, you probably will. Mainly because their stuff is pretty good, but also because you're used to it. That piracy was ultimately good for them.
  
  --
  Circumcision is child abuse.
3. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by Tastecicles · 2012-01-31 19:58 · Score: 4, 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.
  
  --
  Operation Guillotine is in effect.
4. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by benengel · 2012-01-31 20:24 · 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.
  
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  Funny and Interesting things from all around the net
5. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by dejanc · 2012-01-31 20:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Today, I still pirate Photoshop.
  This, clearly, is good for Adobe. (Unless, more likely, it's not...)
  I live in freelance web development world where many people across the globe are included in making a website. The designer designs the site using Photoshop. This is later sent to HTML/CSS cutter who provides bare templates, which are worked into a CMS by programmers.
  Often enough, the designer has a licensed copy of Photoshop. HTML/CSS cutter and most other people in the assembly line don't and they use pirated software if they need it.
  If it were not possible to pirate Photoshop, project managers would demand all designs in a format which can be opened (without any issues) using free software. This way though, we are all locked into PSD's because we are used to it, so it easily maintains it's industry standard position.
  For what's it worth, I've seen excellent designs using Inkscape and GIMP. As much as I would love to be able to move everybody in the process to open source software, it's not going to happen as long as Photoshop is "freely available".
6. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by engun · 2012-01-31 22:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It is.
  Once you enter the professional world (e.g. get a job in that business) you become part of the decision process on which software the company should purchase. Since you will have already gathered experience in photoshop, the company might be more inclined to go with that instead of GIMP.
  This argument might apply to software used in the industry like photoshop, but how will it apply to something like games, intended for personal use?
  
  That's why I think the "piracy is good" argument makes no sense. Piracy is the act of using something without giving money for it. Let's not try to kid ourselves into thinking it's a virtue.
  
  Personally, I think that the way to stop piracy is for industries to stop being greedy. It's just not reasonable to expect the massive prices that are demanded for every song, movie, game etc. etc. on the market. People consume a lot of media. The daily bombardments of advertising is to ensure that this happens. For people to be "in" on the scene, they need to consume this stuff. But who has the money to pay $80 per game? or $20 per "3D" movie ticket? Companies need to sell items cheap and make money on volume. And they can!
  
  High prices or high volume, pick 1. If you charge a high price, expect to cater to a niche market and for the masses to pirate. If you want high volume, charge a low price.
  
  Instead, these guys want to charge a high price and have volume to boot. Greedy bastards.
7. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-31 22:41 · 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.
8. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by silentcoder · 2012-02-01 00:05 · 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.
  
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  Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
9. Re:Piracy: Free Advertising by Riceballsan · 2012-02-01 02:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Because companies are subject to random audits by BSA etc... As well in a company environment no half way inteligent company would bootleg software because they know all it takes is 1 person to turn them in to destroy the company. Turnover is inevitable in a company, and it is equally inevitable that every few years you will have 1-2 people who left the company and aren't on friendly terms with it. Photoshop I believe is one of the best examples of software that is more or less intended to be pirated by the individual users. It is barely useful at all until you are an expert in it, you can't become an expert in it without using it for a long time, and it's price point is well above what any sane home user can afford to pay without high confidence that they are going to recoup the investment.
Uh oh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-31 19:23 · Score: 5, Funny

We took something from the music industry
Incoming lawsuit?
Really? by brit74 · 2012-01-31 19:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

Really? A company that sells their product for a dollar finds it's uneconomical to drag pirates into court? Besides, it's easy for people to buy Angry Birds since it's easily searchable in the AppStore, and most people would find it way more trouble than it's worth to try to pirate it and save themselves a few bucks. They have a huge convenience advantage over pirates.
1. Re:Really? by Sqr(twg) · 2012-01-31 19:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  This is exactly the situation the music industry was in. If they only had created an easy way to buy and instantly download songs for a dollar a piece, piracy and sites like napster would not have become so popular. Alas, they chose to rely on lawsuits instead, probably costing them billions in lost revenue, untlil Apple more or less forced them to join the iTunes store.
He is right by future+assassin · 2012-01-31 19:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Photoshop anyone?

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1. Re:He is right by dropadrop · 2012-01-31 19:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Photoshop anyone?
  This 5x
  Most people would easily get their problems solved with Gimp, and if there was a huge user base of simple users they might even make an easier "Lite" version out of it. Adobe knows, so they don't put meaningful copy protection in their applications. They know their target customers are corporations since normal people won't have 500-1000€ to throw into such an application, so they just try to ensure that people are accustomed to their products already before working anywhere. This way once they get a job they'll be asking for photoshop instead of permission to download Gimp.
  I even see this at work. Somebody who's only need for editing graphics is resizing a logo from 250*120 pixels to 125*60 pixels will be running photoshop to do it...
Ripping Off by cosm · 2012-01-31 19:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

...Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans.

Because Rovio brought us the first of this wonderful concept of projectile-tower crushing. No ripping off there. Never been done. Glad people pay for it. **puts on old and bitter smug-cap, goes back to Crush the Castle 3**

--
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Well, well. by mykos · 2012-01-31 19:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

Paulo Coelho would tend to agree with them, even taking it a step further. He's joined up with Pirate Bay as part of an arts promotion program.
Gotta Test Drive A Car Too! by EETech1 · 2012-01-31 19:31 · 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:)
Microsoft has been doing it for years by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-31 19:32 · Score: 5, Informative

Even though they would probably never admit it, IMHO this is how Windows and MS Office got so popular.
I do not believe MS would not be able to come with a better way of protecting against illegal copying. It is just that allowing people to copy windows without much effort created a very nice near-monopoly on OS for them.
1. Re:Microsoft has been doing it for years by hcs_$reboot · 2012-01-31 19:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Even though they would probably never admit it
  They did it involuntarily.
  
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2. Re:Microsoft has been doing it for years by GreatBunzinni · 2012-01-31 22:37 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  They did it involuntarily.
  Not quite. They did it voluntarily, and in a very explicit way. Bill Gates himself has said the following:
  
  "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though," Gates told an audience at the University of Washington. "And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
  Even the founder of Microsoft stated that the unauthorized (and free) distribution of Microsoft products is benefitial for a company such as his own. The totalitarian copyright enforcement crap only comes in as useful if a product already attained a reasonable market share, and therefore there is a copyright to enforce. Until there isn't a copyright to enforce, they simply turn a blind eye for convenience and due to business sense.
  
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If Beethoven is alive today ... by Taco+Cowboy · 2012-01-31 19:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

... he would be filthy rich - and his offspring will be forever filthy rich as well, thanks to our "perpetual copyright laws"
Unfortunately, he ain't
That is why Beethoven died dirt poor
But on the other hand, the world is far more richer because no one could monopolize the wonderful music of Beethoven

--
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
1. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by sjames · 2012-01-31 21:33 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  A good story, but not what happened. He described himself as penniless for a while due to the costs of caring for his sick brother (there's something many in the U.S. can relate to) and his lack of output during that time, but he wasn't exactly out on the streets (in fact, he was still able to appear as a nobleman). Several bouts of personal illness and a protracted legal battle didn't help either. However, he left an estate when he died.
2. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by crutchy · 2012-01-31 21:47 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  in the US, it only depends on how good your lawyer is
3. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by houghi · 2012-01-31 23:06 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You could say the same for Rubens Oh wait, not only was he filthy rich, he also put his name on the work of his students, thus pirating his own students.
  Also Beethoven might have been rich today, that would not mean his offspring would be as well. His record producer would be and most likely he still would be dirt poor.
  There are plenty of musicians today that are not rich. Some just like music more then they like money, just like some would never work for a specific company, no matter how much they like coding.
  It is a pity that money is seen as the only proof of success.
  
  --
  Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
4. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by Gription · 2012-01-31 23:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Actually it depends on how good your lobbyist is...
  
  And while you are at it you should incorporate because Washington recognizes that the rights of individuals are subordinate to the rights of corporations. Don't go in groveling. If you go in as a corporation they are already trained to do whatever you ask.
5. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by hairyfeet · 2012-02-01 01:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Nice strawman you have there, don't mind the match...WHOOSH! One has exactly fuck all to do with the other, you might as well have said 'Welll...instead of playing with your iPhone you should go out and catch kiddie fiddlers". And most of us had NO problem with copyrights as the founding fathers intended, but the simple fact that Walt Disney, a man whose been dead longer than most of us have been alive, has most of his first works, works made when planes were made of cloth and antibiotics were just a dream, they are STILL under copyright? i'm sorry clueless but that is just fucked up. You have a right to make money from your works, you do NOT have a right to eternal profits, either make NEW things, which was the whole point of copyrights, to give the artist the money to continue working, or kindly GTFO.
  
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6. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by muindaur · 2012-02-01 02:15 · 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.
7. Re:If Beethoven is alive today ... by Hatta · 2012-02-01 02:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If Beethoven were alive today, he'd be making tiny residuals while the recording industry made millions off of the rerelease of his works on BluRay.
  
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Exactly. by MrEricSir · 2012-01-31 20:06 · Score: 4, Funny

That's why I always use the bathroom in the restaurant next door.

--
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Re:In before... by unkiereamus · 2012-01-31 20:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

In before someone justifies their piracy by saying they help with advertising.
Oh wait, only six posts as I type this and already too late.
I'm going to go ahead and abandon modding on this article, because I can't believe no one has called you on this crap.

Specifically, TFS and TFA both defend piracy by saying they help with advertising, specifically quoting people who are (massively successful) content creators, you know, the folks who are financially impacted by piracy...

Look, I can see both sides of the argument (well, in detail it's more than 2) about piracy, I can see how they both have valid points, and am unwilling to come down firmly on either side.

What I can't support is someone who is so much a zealot that they resort to this sort of attack by ignoring basic facts.

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I really wanted to watch Van Helsing the other day by Idimmu+Xul · 2012-01-31 20:33 · 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 Â£8 for the Van Helsing Blu-Ray, on iTunes it is about Â£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 Â£1 to download/stream and view once.
Lovefilms do PPV at Â£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 Â£5pm.
Netflix do unlimited streaming for Â£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 Â£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?

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Re:I stole a car the other day ... by mwvdlee · 2012-01-31 20:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

Could you please explain how you stole a car without the owner losing it?
You know, like the digital copies this article is about.

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Re:Appstore economics. by ghostdoc · 2012-01-31 22:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

If your customers aren't buying your products, please stop whining about customer behaviour and change your products to suit the market.
If your business model doesn't make money in the market you've chosen, please stop whining about the market and change your business model.

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.
The market is fixed. Your business model and product is flexible (or should be). So change your product so it suits the market conditions.
Rovio understood that the market they chose to operate in has a large amount of piracy. Instead of trying to change the market to suit their products, they chose the eminently more profitable option of working out how they could make piracy work for them. As you've pointed out, one of the ways they did this was by launching merch to go with their game that allowed them to take advantage of the fanbase generated by pirate players. As another poster pointed out, the game they created is not unique and the Castle version doesn't have the merch potential, which is possibly why Angry Birds made a lot more money from the same game.
Pirating software is going to happen regardless of any action you take. It's a fact of life in the market. So you can choose to view pirated copies as lost sales and let your business plan get broken by it, or you can choose to view it as free marketing and incorporate it into your business plan.

--
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
Re:Appstore economics. by nomaddamon · 2012-01-31 22:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm a hobby developer for WP7 with 2 of my friends. The first thing we do on every release is upload our app to various torrent sites and seed the hell out of it.

If someone has jailbroken their phone and is capable of and interested in finding, downloading and installing a pirated app on their phone, they are lost revenue for us anyway.
Our only hope of revenue from these users is to provide them with good enough app so that they keep using it and might buy it (and advertise the app within their circle of friends, who might not be competent enough to pirate the app)

If it is easier to buy the app on appstore than to pirate it, then pirates are good for you

I can't say for sure that we wouldn't have made it without piracy, but currently we have 5 simple apps out and with total cost of 2000$ for launch advertising (and "free" work for 2-3 weeks at nights, after our daily jobs) per app, we gross around 6500$ every month

Since we seed our apps ourselves, we see that approximately 20% of installations are pirated (~2000 torrent downloads vs ~10000 sales via store every month) but we are sure that without the 20% "lost" sales, we wouldn't make the top charts of legal downloads... ever....
Re:That's unpossible! by Pikoro · 2012-01-31 22:57 · Score: 4, Funny

http://chrome.angrybirds.com/
Your welcome. Your wife has already thanked me :)

--
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Re:That's unpossible! by tehcyder · 2012-02-01 00:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

And of course, with our luck it happens to be the one who produces shit as a product.
What precisely is wrong with Angry Birds as a game? (Other than the fact that it is popular and therefore non-1337, and is played by people who aren't "gamers" on machines that don't require $1000 graphics cards).

--
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Re:That's unpossible! by TheRaven64 · 2012-02-01 00:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

The fact that it's basically identical to 100 other throw-a-thing-to-knock-over-other-things games? The first 10 or so I played were all fun, but after a while they got a bit repetitive. Then Angry Birds was released and everyone talks about it as if it's the best game ever and totally new and original. It's a competent implementation of an old idea - not the best I've played, but not the worst either - but the public reaction to it is completely over the top. Angry Birds fans are like people encountering Doom 3 as the first FPS that they've ever seen and saying how amazing it is.

--
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:I stole a car the other day ... by psiclops · 2012-02-01 01:03 · Score: 5, Funny

you know, if you'd just pirate your movies like a normal person you wouldn't have to see all those silly "you wouldn't steal a car" ads at the start, and then you probably wouldn't think that stealing a car is the same thing as pirating software.

--
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
Or your PR dept. (Rovio is lying) by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-01 01:08 · 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 (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.
1. Re:Or your PR dept. (Rovio is lying) by Stewie241 · 2012-02-01 02:55 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think you're saying more or less what the summary says:
  See:
  "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."
  and
  " 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.""
  Your point is obvious - piracy doesn't make you money. On the other hand, piracy can lead to a growing customer base. The point Hed is making is more that suing customers is more likely to lead to reducing your customer base rather than growing it. This is perhaps particularly applicable when it comes to small games like Angry Birds where there is money to be made off of merchandising.
  In Rovio's case, as you seem to inadvertently point out, Rovio makes money both on the sale of the game and on the generated advertising revenue. If people pirate the game, they still make the advertising revenue.
  Wrapped up in this is the idea that Rovio's business model doesn't just depend on game sales, but also on advertising revenue and merchandising. This should be obvious as Angry Birds is free on Android anyway.
  I think what they recognize is that for their particular product, there is a large portion of users who would not pay for the game. The choice for them is play the game for free or don't play it at all - they might as well have these users playing the game and generating hype than going and playing some other game and making it popular instead.
2. Re:Or your PR dept. (Rovio is lying) by Luckyo · 2012-02-01 05:14 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I find that their POV is rather similar to that of microsoft. "We don't like piracy, but if you're going to pirate, we prefer you pirate our stuff then that of our competitors, because we will still make money on publicity, adaptation numbers and so on".