Slashdot Mirror
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.
I have 31 apps on my Android phone. 50% of them are paid apps. I have not paid for any of them. Finding paid apps for free is as easy as plugging in the name of the app into google + app + cracked.
I do not like paying for apps. I've never paid for apps and never will pay for apps.
Major reason why I use Android is precisely because I can download paid apps for free.
Developers should find other business models. Keep Android free please!
piracy exists on every platform. The question is can you at least get enough people to pay for it to make it worth your while. Obviously a lot of people are finding that hard to do on Android. People just don't understand being a total freetard doesn't work when the majority agrees and decides to do the same thing.
Piracy is on every platform but if the majority decide to be a pack of freetards then it's not worth a developer's time. Google does need to address is because eventually developers will get sick and tired of it.