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.

Re:Good news everyone!

[Annirak]

I need a +1 cranky mod option.

Re:Good news everyone!

[Tr3vin]

Yes, because there is no piracy on iOS.

Re:Good news everyone!

[X0563511]

See that * next to crazyjj that you carefully omitted from your summary?

That means he pays slashdot. So he can see such articles 10 minutes or so before they post. He had plenty of time to write that up.

Re:Good news everyone!

[SomePgmr]

I've owned both, and a quick google search looks to overwhelmingly confirm my suspicions. iOS sales outnumber Android sales 9:1. Android apps on both platforms are pirated 2,300% more often for the Android version vs the iOS version. Meanwhile, Android users (by percentage) are consistently years behind on system software, so there's little reason to expect any of this to change soon.

Of course, the list goes on. Let's not make stupid excuses for a bad market experience just because, as users, we like Android better.

Re:Good news everyone!

[TheRaven64]

Well, except in the whole old-style 'making money' sense. Apple devices still occupy the most profitable 10% of the market. I suspect that Google and Apple are both happy with this: Google wants lots of Android users so it can collect information about them for advertising and make money out of them, Apple wants the high-margin part of the market to make the biggest profit from direct sales.

Re:Good news everyone!

[DurendalMac]

And Apple is still making more from iPhones and the app ecosystem than the rest of the smartphone market combined. Yep, they sure got steamrolled!

Re:Good news everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, with IOS, unless your customers are jailbroken, all apps have to be sold through Apple. So there's 100% piracy, although Apple only steals 30%, like any successful parasite.

Been working on a sales model that "tried" to take less than the 30%, however, when you start looking at the volume of product at $0.99 credit processing fees eat up most of that 30%. Now there are a lot of tricks to manage that (like how Apple will bundle purchases and do one transaction at the end of the day, but for the vast majority we just couldn't offer more than 70% on sales that less than $.99. Now for higher priced stuff, the credit fee percentage drops because most of it is tied in transaction fees which run around $.20 per transaction, so on a $10 purchase it is a much lower percentage.

We are looking at alternative models like dwolla that don't charge for transactions under $10.00 but not enough people are on that platform to build a business model around it.

Re:Good news everyone!

[mlts]

The only thing keeping iOS apps from being pirated is the "jail" system. JB an iPhone, slap on a certain app [1] via adding a shady repo to Cydia, and start leeching.

Android is not built with just keeping people away from root as the single source of protection. Apps have the LVL functions to check if they are legit or not. In Jelly Bean, apps are encrypted per device and mounted via a loopback filesystem on the fly.

The reason why iOS apps have a less pirate rate is because in some countries where piracy is rampant, Android is available on the inexpensive devices. Where piracy goes, malware goes, so that is why we heard about malware running loose in Asian markets before it ever reared its head on US or European shores. iOS tends to be on more expensive phones [2], so generally people who can afford the phone can generally afford apps.

All and all, it isn't the OS that is the issue here. Android has a more robust security mechanism than iOS. However, Apple does a lot of work in being the gatekeeper, and ensuring their walls are high and stay high (especially with the fact that on newer iDevices that one can't save SHSH blobs on, all jailbreaks can be just one restore away from being gone and gone for good until a new one is made after Apple does an iOS update.)

[1]: The Dev Team and most people who use JB functionality abhor the pirates, because there are a lot of legit uses for a jailbroken device and pirating attacks the JB ecosystem as a whole. If they could block the pirate apps, they would, but there will be someone who would "jailbreak the jailbreak", so it would be pointless.

[2]: Expensive on a world basis. Just taking price comparisons in the US is different because in a lot of places, phones are not subsidized, so the user has to pay the entire cost. That is why the low end Huwei and ZTE phones are extremely popular.

Re:Good news everyone!

[pegasustonans]

Hyep, that would get cracked in about 43 seconds. Android crackers have cracked pretty much all in-app protections. We even have apps that crack other apps and remove ads from them.

Cracking apps is unnecessary. You can block almost all ads with a properly updated hosts file.

It's an elegant solution, which illustrates the difference between an open platform and a closed one.

Re:Good news everyone!

[nahdude812]

I won't do in-app purchases even for free apps, and even for apps I would have gladly paid several dollars for retail. The reason is simple: If I restore my phone, get a new phone, or even just uninstall and reinstall, I lose credit for that IAP.

IAP's need to be replayable for me to be willing to invest in them. I don't want to have to re-pay for your app each time I upgrade something or make room on my device. Some apps handle IAP replaying cleanly. Most do not. I'm not a gambling man, so if your model is IAP for a non-transient purchase, count me out.

Of course I'm the very small minority, so...

Re:Good news everyone!

[nahdude812]

Android apps on both platforms are pirated 2,300% more often for the Android version vs the iOS version

Where do you get this figure? It sounds absurd on the face of it (and the number is cited in a way to sound bigger, "2,300%" is 23 times - which I still don't accept without a credible source). Jailbreaking is far more common among those I know with iPhones than rooting is among those I know with Android phones. I don't know anyone who is willing to admit to pirating Android apps, and I know several different personal circles who traffic in pirated iOS apps.

I wonder if Android is either easier to figure out who pirated vs who didn't, or if something about the Android platform falsely inflates these "pirated" numbers. Most articles I've read that talk about Android pirating do nothing to describe how they meter this, so any reporting on it at all is specious as far as I'm concerned.

Re:Good news everyone!

[Grayhand]

Everyone complains about the "whopping 30%" Apple takes but it's out of ignorance of how distribution and retail works. They are acting as both a distributor and retailer so 30% is excellent. Others tried charging 50% but most retreated because of the iTunes model. I'm working on self publishing books and 30% is a dream compared to traditional publishers. Considering what they bring to the table 30% isn't out of line in any way.

Re:Good news everyone!

[cbo100]

I won't do in-app purchases even for free apps, and even for apps I would have gladly paid several dollars for retail. The reason is simple: If I restore my phone, get a new phone, or even just uninstall and reinstall, I lose credit for that IAP.

What? iOS handles this just fine. Got a new phone? Restore your backup from iCloud, most apps will just keep the purchases enabled. If you uninstall and reinstall the app then you just use "restore In App Purchases" button and they all re-appear.

Re:Good news everyone!

[Corporate T00l]

Are IAPs really that transient on Android? I must admit that I don't currently own any Android devices, but on my iOS devices, in-app purchases apply at the iTunes account level and are not only persistent, but also apply (without any extra purchase) to all instances of that app across different devices set to the same account. The iOS behavior where purchases are tied to your account and not to any particular device has made buying both apps and upgrades much more appealing to me than I originally thought would be the case.

Re:Good news everyone!

[SomePgmr]

You didn't cite a single source.

I thought I was pretty up-front about where those came from, and I don't think I presented it as my own, comprehensive research into the market intricacies of mobile platforms.

But if you wanted my search terms, I think it was something like, "piracy ios vs android" or "developer ios vs android". Going a little further for those who don't want to look...

First one was probably: http://www.diasks2.com/post/20172033158/ios-vs-android-a-comparison-for-first-time
or maybe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jun/10/apple-developer-wwdc-schmidt-android
or maybe
http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/05/android-app-sales-piracy-matters-seasons-dont/

There are about a billion more if you care to read them.

Second was probably: http://www.develop-online.net/news/38848/Android-app-pirated-2300-more-than-iOS-edition
Though here's one that says 90% - http://keyeslabs.com/joomla/blogs/i-think-im-becoming-an-android/136-android-the-perfect-piracy-storm
and one that says they had 83%, if you prefer - http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/05/wired-uk-android-game-piracy/

Third was something like: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-ios-vs-android-fragmentation-2012-6
or
http://opensignalmaps.com/reports/fragmentation.php

Of course there are another 8 gazillion results for each of these. I said only what I saw.

That aside, many of these are topics we've covered extensively here on Slashdot. If you think it's all FUD, you're obviously welcome to discuss and I'll be interested to see it. I have no real vested interest in the results besides being a user.

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.

Re:Just wondering

[dattaway]

Sure would be nice to have a "tip jar" donation button. *click* *click* *click* I sure would be sending quarters by the dozens...concept has been around for decades...

Because, you know...

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Piracy doesn't exist on the iPhone, right?

Re:Because, you know...

[bhlowe]

That wasn't said-- but comparatively, Android users are MORE UNETHICAL and SPEND LESS MONEY*. Part of that is Apple users have more disposable income.. but also jailbreaking is not widespread. Most jailbreaks on newer hardware are tethered, meaning you need to be near your computer if you want to restart your phone for any reason--not worth it for most. *Disclaimer, not all Android users are cheap, bastards of low moral character. Some restrictions apply.

*Correction

[redemtionboy]

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

Company you've never heard of changes pricing

[i kan reed]

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.

Re:Oh yeah, that'll show them.

[bky1701]

More like they sell things in-game, and this was just a publicity stunt.

Re:Sad

[Vintermann]

Sometimes it's appropriate. I bought Early Bird for Android. Later they made it free, which I'm OK with. What's not OK is making the free version (which I was automatically "upgraded" to) have intrusive ads.

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

[amicusNYCL]

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

Unless you're reading a different "the article" than I did, no it doesn't. It doesn't say anything about the piracy rate on iOS and the word "magnitude" does not appear in the article text. The only claim it makes in terms of numbers, for either platform, is this paragraph:

If we go by piracy ratio, developers have come up with some rather starling figures. Korea based com2uS has said that some games have seen piracy rate as high as 90%. Appy Entertainment have seen piracy to the ratio of 70:1 i.e. for every 70 illegal installs, there in only one genuine purchase.

Also, if the piracy rate on iOS was in fact "orders of magnitude" smaller, with "orders" being plural, then that would assume a worst-case piracy rate of 0.9%. Various statistics floating around, like these, show iOS piracy rates between 25% - 75% for various types of apps. Various developers, when they actually disclose these numbers, refer to worst-case rates at between 50% to 90%.

In other words, you're talking out of your ass. I guess you're strictly correct, though. The iOS piracy rate is zero "orders of magnitude" smaller than the Android piracy rate. So yeah, it's orders of magnitude smaller. Zero orders. It's also zero orders larger.

Re:There is - far less

[cpu6502]

People must be F'in cheap if they aren't willing to spend 99 cents. If I see a Kindle book for 99 cents I just grab it; I'm not wasting time trying to find a free pirate version. (shrug). So much for the "We would buy your product if it were cheap enough" excuse. It's been officially debunked.

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

[Taco Cowboy]

People must be F'in cheap if they aren't willing to spend 99 cents.

 
To you it may be merely 99 cents but to someone in India it may mean the income of half a day of laborious work
 

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.

Re:There is - far less

[icebike]

On the other hand, not keeping your mouth shut about the piracy, and suddenly announcing you're giving your game away because of all the "piracy" may get you some publicity that will increase your in-app income by even more than continued sales would have done. It's possible, and obviously it's what these guys are banking on.

And the beauty of that is there doesn't have to be any real level of piracy for this ploy to work.

Their refusal to reveal actual piracy numbers pretty much lends credence to this possibility.

Re:There is - far less

[PixetaledPikachu]

People must be F'in cheap if they aren't willing to spend 99 cents.

To you it may be merely 99 cents but to someone in India it may mean the income of half a day of laborious work

Something is inherently wrong with the society when a person with USD2 a day income is even considering to spend half of his daily income on fruit ninja

Re:There is - far less

[rjstanford]

Although an amazingly large number of people in the US will happily spend half their annual income on a car that far outstrips their needs - often spreading that payment out over half a decade or more to do so. People aren't logical.

Re:Why?

[Andy Dodd]

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.

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.

More great Slashdot editing

[wonkey_monkey]

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.

Did you read your links?! Stop making shit up

[rgbrenner]

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?!

No

[Tridus]

"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.

Rubbish..

[anomaly256]

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.