Developer Drops Game Price To $0 Citing Android Piracy

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.

Comments

Good news everyone!

[crazyjj]

From Google:

From Jelly Bean and forward, paid apps in Google Play are encrypted with a device-specific key before they are delivered and stored on the device. We know you work hard building your apps. We work hard to protect your investment.

Well in about 5+ years, when developers can abandon earlier versions, that should really help out a lot.

And they wonder why iOS stays on top. It's not just because of numbers of hipness, you know. It's also because, for developers, it means not having to deal with Google's sloppy, haphazard approach in Android to everything the Apple does so professionally in iOS (especially when it comes to the App Store vs. the Android Marketplace). This is just another example.

Just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

one has to wonder whether Open Source games with a "donation" build in the store would do better than proprietary games with upfront costs.

Wonder all you want, the answer is no.

*Correction

[redemtionboy]

Developer drops game price to $0, failing to cite that it was a really shitty game that charged for upgrades.

There is - far less

[SuperKendall]

The article mentions the piracy rate for iOS, the rate is orders of magnitude smaller.

Everyone expects some piracy, but when 90+% of your "sales" are piracy you cannot support any app - especially so if there is any server component, or any support load at all.

Re:There is - far less

[Dunbal]

If random people with illegitimate copies are allowed to use your servers to patch or for gameplay, then you are doing it wrong.

Re:There is - far less

[poetmatt]

usually if you want to claim that nobody's paying for your app you usually want to look at why. In this case, it's being a jackass dev and trying to force customers to pay for things in-game along with a paid app.

Is it that hard to figure out that your fans aren't as stupid as you'd like to treat them?

Re:There is - far less

[icebike]

If random people with illegitimate copies are allowed to use your servers to patch or for gameplay, then you are doing it wrong.

Or, you are doing it INTENTIONALLY.

The game in question supports In-App-Purchases, and in fact, to play the game to conclusion, most users will spend more money
for in-app-purchase of weapons etc than the game's initial purchase price. The game calls home.

These purchases can't (yet) be hacked like the reported hacking of IOS in-app purchases.

Its widely suspected that this was Madfinger Games monetization plan all along.

They planned to release at 99 cents, gain a quick couple hundred thousand downloads, recovering all of their development costs. (This isn't their first game, and they already had their game engine in the can from earlier games).

Then, magnanimously, when it became clear that you needed to make in-app-purchases, they planned to make it free.

They go so much flack for making it free after charging about a quarter of a million people 99 cents, that they decided to play the victim card.

But ALL THE TIME their game had been calling home for authorization at install, and ALL THE TIME they had allowed these pirated installs because they were intending to make their money on In-App-Purchases, and really didn't give a rip about piracy.

Its a suckers play, and most of the mainstream press as well as bloggers who should know better are falling for it.

Re:There is - far less

[icebike]

Did you ever stop to consider that perhaps it's easier to control in-app purchases than it is to prevent the initial pirated version from being installed?

I considered this for about 37 seconds, then realized it was not germane.
So what if people are emailing the .apk all over the world? The were still able to bank all the sales reported in the Google Market.

They had around a quarter of a million PAID downloads at the time they declared it free.

Regardless of being pirated or purchased, the money flow from In-APP will be the same. They knew this going in. Like I said, its not their first trip to the bank with games. If you can earn a quick quarter million in under a month, why make it free? Just keep your mouth shut about the piracy and bank the legitimate sales along with the in-app money.

Free advertising on Slashdot

[dmesg0]

1. Create a game with in-app-purchases, but sell it for 1$ instead of for 0$
2. Drop the price to 0 and get free advertisement on Slashdot
3. Profit! (from in-app-purchases)

But where's the ??? part?

 

Re:It's not piracy

[Andy Dodd]

Dead Trigger is fun until you reach the point where it pushes you to buy ingame cash with real money.

TFA leaves out a critical aspect of Dead Trigger - It was one of the only examples of a "freemium" game that relied HEAVILY on in-app purchases, which also had an initial purchase price.

Note that they're not citing any piracy problems with their more expensive (but not "freemium" in their payment structure) games.

The way the article is written, it makes it sound like the developer is hurting and this has dropped their revenues to zero - which is bullshit. 90% of Dead Trigger's revenue was from IAPs to begin with. Dropping the purchase price to zero helps them by exposing more users to their IAP push.