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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.
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.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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.
Piracy doesn't exist on the iPhone, right?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The number of "I want my dollar back" post at that Facebook link is really sad.
Developer drops game price to $0, failing to cite that it was a really shitty game that charged for upgrades.
Reports today indicate a small developer you've never heard of, has altered how they will finance a product you've never heard of. The pricing cited factors commonly referenced in the field the product competes in, but no supporting data was provided. Tune in at 11 for detailed analysis about how free products differ from open source ones, with a panelist who barely understands economics or copyright law.
More like they sell things in-game, and this was just a publicity stunt.
Great Intellect...
I don't know about you guys, but many I know say things like this to me, "Hey you're a programmer. You should develop an iPhone or Android app and make a lot of money!"
When I try to explain to them the reality, I just get trite responses back or their eyes glaze over.
There's plenty of demand for your product when it's free. Like when you help them with their computer problems (for free) and they say, "You should do this for a living!"
"Less piracy. At this point, there's no way I'd mess with a phone app, or an old fashioned installible."
At no point have I ever, nor do I ever intend to, depends upon programs which I do not control. The "we control your data" model is bound for a big crash as soon as it causes a billion dollar lawsuit.
Great Intellect...
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, and what do I do with the data if it is only readable by your program? What if I need to access it without internet? I am not at all interested in this new scam.
Great Intellect...
Information wants to be free. Why should programmers get a pass when musicians and moviemakers don't?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Explanation:
1. You "buy" the app and it can phone home all your juicy details
2. You pirate the app and it doesn't phone home.
So, if he drops the price to "free" then more people will get it via legitimate means than via piracy, so while he loses out on sale revenue, he gets all the data he was digging for instead.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
free app + google ads, which seems to have been lost in the panicked summaries
He didn't... Dead Trigger is a "freemium" app - given how critical in-app-purchases (IAPs) are for that game, it should never have had an initial purchase price assigned to it.
90%+ of their revenue was from IAPs to begin with.
They're blaming it on piracy - but plenty of other developers are having no issues with piracy. The fact was they put in a perfect recipe to drive people towards piracy - not making your app worth the money paid for it. Dead Trigger's reliance on IAP meant that the initial purchase price did nothing but anger users.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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?
More specifically - Even when it cost $1, 90% of the revenue from the game was in-app purchases.
No other game on Android that I'm aware of had an initial purchase price set when combined with the heavy pushing of IAPs post-installation.
You can have an initial purchase price, or you can push IAPs heavily - but you can't do both and have users accept that.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This developer is shady. Check the reviews for this game on Google Play. Apparently you can't get very far in the game without buying weapons/upgrades that cost real money. There are a fair number of complaints from people spending $5 for in-game credits, not receiving the credits, and getting no response from the developers.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Madfinger Games has joined the long list of developers who have recently turned their paid Android based game, Dead Trigger, to a free one.
Just how many developers have written this one game, then? Oh, and it should be "into a free one."
The iOS version of the game still costs $0.99 and hasn't been made free.
Thanks for clarifying that, because when you said it still costs $0.99 I thought it might also be free.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
>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.
Yes, this has been around since the early 1980s and it died out around 1995. It was called Shareware, and huge amounts of software were released this way. Very few people ever "donated".
One thing I've noticed, which may or may not be affecting how little Android app developers are getting for their apps, is that the Google Play store is useless for discovering new apps. Totally useless. They display ads for a small number of high-profile apps, most of which would get a bunch of purchases regardless, and they rarely cycle those ads out. There's "Editor's Choice" apps, but those are the same high-profile apps and again are rarely added to. Otherwise, the only methods of discovery are looking at the top lists (which rarely change), or searching.
Most of the apps I have installed I had to discover elsewhere, including some terrific games (even terrific free games, which you'd think cheap Android users would really go for) which only have on the order of 1000 or so downloads at most, making them totally invisible as far as a user browsing the store is concerned.
Did you read the links you posted? The first link has NO FIGURES at all. The second says this:
This year alone, the iOS App Store has provided developers with $3.4 billion in revenues, while the Android Market has delivered only $240 million to its developers.
That's way off from your "750 million and 500 million".
Why bother posting links if you're just going to make up the numbers anyway?!
Exactly, it's a terrible, terrible game.
Well, actually the game seemed ok from what I played of it. And then it got to the store, and the way to buy things was to complete various things out of the game, like visiting websites or completing offers... OR you could pay to advance.
So yes, it was the lowest of crap types of apps, the Freemium. I HATE these apps with a passion and wish the whole concept would die.
Provide a free 'trial' version of a game so you can see how it plays on your device, then charge a fee for the full game.
THE END. I've bought plenty of games on my Android phones, PLENTY. But this crap game got uninstalled after about 10 minutes of play.
"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."
Seriously? $0.99 is too much so they pirate it, but if you open source it they'll give you money instead of just playing the free version?
Not a chance. These people are just cheap. They'll take the cheap option. Open source is not some magic fairy dust that is going to fix that.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
would be that iOS have less piracy because more users value the programs they use and with a sane pricing scheme that keep honest people honest only assholes will pirate. I work in a Data Center and admin around 150-200 servers running Windows, Solaris, Linux and AIX, but I don't pirate despite I have the knowhow because I value my job, and value the job of the developers that make the apps that I enjoy.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Bah. Correction: you don't need to install a new rom on it to pirate I suppose (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bat86GeYTU with 750k views)
Not a specific person; the public as a whole.
If I sa my truckload of dirt costs a million dollars, and the public at large says it is worth at most 100 dollars, there is no way I can equitably sell my dirt. If I sell it for 100 dollars, I feel cheated, and consider the deal unequitable.
The cost to dig the dirt is inconsequential. The dirt could very well have cost a million to dig. It could be fabulously rich in platinum ore or something. The problem is the perception of value. If your product is percieved as cheap, and of little value, you will never reach equity in the transaction.
There are two things you can do:
1) don't sell high value dirt for 100 dollars. (High value games at .99 dollars.)
2) seek to improve public awareness so that people understand what they are getting, and why your dirt costs what it does.
If the second option incurs a cost sufficient that it negates any tangible value in getting the equitable price accepted, (yes, you start selling dirt for a million dollars, but it costs trillions of dollars to educate the public, making the effort wasted) it is completely absurd economically as an option, leaving only option #1. Don't sell high value dirt. Only sell cheap dirt, because it is all people will buy.
See for instance, my own views about the price of games.
I am completely unwilling to pay 60$ for a game. I will pay at most 45$, and that had better be epic in every sense of the word. I hold this assertion because:
I make 30k a year. This tabulates out to around 14$/hr. The equivalent of my life I expend to obtain your game is a little over 4 hours. Is your game worth 4 hours of my life? I don't believe it is. You might invest weeks or months of your life to produce the game-- no contest. The question is if it is equitable to demand 4hrs of average time spent working from the thousands of people you intend to sell it to. For the sake of argument, let's say you spent 2 years making it. (Straight up, nonstop, no sleep, total time spent == 2 years.) That is 17520 hours. At 4hrs per person, you would break parity at 4380 buyers. The average game sells millions of copies. At 1 million copies sold, that is a markup over parity for your time of 228%. Unless there are that many people involved in production, (which I don't see in the end credits...) that price is inflated. Usually games with the 60$ price point sell far more than that. Usually in the 5 to 6 million unit numbers. That comes closer to 1140 people spending 2 years of their life, nonstop, to necessitate that price, assuming equal exchange of time.
It is important to note: I do not consider your time to be more expensive than mine. I am angineer, who works in avionics. I am simply not union. My wage is equitable. If your rate of pay is necessary to be higher to have a decent quality of living, it is because your local economy suffers higher inflation than mine. By demanding the higher price as a flat rate instead of pricing for the local economy, you are expecting me to accept a bad deal. End of discussion on that point. If you had developed it locally, you would not have been paid as much for your time. Demanding that I subsidize your higher cost of living is unethical. My money is worth more to me than yours is. I expect to compartively more for it than you do. If you make 60k a year (twice what I do) you should adjust the price you think your game is worth against my pay grade and local economy's buying power. You will find that for the same equity you are demanding, you would have to be paying 120$ for your games. If you feel this is unequitable, congratulations. Now you know why I won't pay that price.
I am happy to pay at most 45$. To your buying power, that is a 90$ game. It had better be damned good.
Blanket price setting sets unrealistic prices, which people refuse to pay. Their refusal to pay that price is NOT unreasonable. The blanket pricing *IS*.
I don't care that your home costs a million dollars. Your home here, of comparable v
Who pirates a 99cent game? I'm betting no one. More likely, they just realised they could get more revenue per install with an ad-supported + spyware model and knew Apple wouldn't let them put spyware in the app store. Lets do a quick test... android market.. dead trigger.. permissions.. Oh look, "READ PHONE STATE AND IDENTITY - Allows the app to access the phone features of the device. An app with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like." and "RETRIEVE RUNNING APPS - Allows the app to retrieve information about currently and recently running tasks. Malicious apps may discover private information about other apps." and "AUTOMATICALLY START AT BOOT Allows the app to have itself started as soon as the system has finished booting. This can make it take longer to start the tablet and allow the app to slow down the overall tablet by always running. Allows the app to have itself started as soon as the system has finished booting. This can make it take longer to start the phone and allow the app to slow down the overall phone by always running." ...... Yep, nothing suss here, a FRACKIN VIDEO GAME totally needs those permissions.
Keep your 'free' crap. And next time, at least TRY to mask your dishonesty a bit better. This bullshit isn't fooling anyone.