Developer Drops Game Price To $0 Citing Android Piracy

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Developer Drops Game Price To $0 Citing Android Piracy

Posted by Unknown on Monday July 23, 2012 @08:56AM from the step-two-still-unknown dept.

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.

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Good news everyone! by crazyjj · 2012-07-23 08:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:Good news everyone! by Annirak · 2012-07-23 09:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I need a +1 cranky mod option.
2. Re:Good news everyone! by Tr3vin · 2012-07-23 09:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Yes, because there is no piracy on iOS.
3. Re:Good news everyone! by X0563511 · 2012-07-23 09:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
  
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4. Re:Good news everyone! by TheRaven64 · 2012-07-23 09:17 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
  
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5. Re:Good news everyone! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-23 09:22 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
6. Re:Good news everyone! by mlts · 2012-07-23 09:38 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
Just wondering by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-23 08:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by redemtionboy · 2012-07-23 09:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Developer drops game price to $0, failing to cite that it was a really shitty game that charged for upgrades.
Re:Sad by Vintermann · 2012-07-23 09:08 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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There is - far less by SuperKendall · 2012-07-23 09:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:There is - far less by Dunbal · 2012-07-23 09:25 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If random people with illegitimate copies are allowed to use your servers to patch or for gameplay, then you are doing it wrong.
  
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  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
2. Re:There is - far less by poetmatt · 2012-07-23 09:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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?
3. Re:There is - far less by amicusNYCL · 2012-07-23 09:41 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
  
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4. Re:There is - far less by cpu6502 · 2012-07-23 10:42 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  
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5. Re:There is - far less by icebike · 2012-07-23 10:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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6. Re:There is - far less by icebike · 2012-07-23 11:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
  
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Re:Why? by Andy+Dodd · 2012-07-23 09:21 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Free advertising on Slashdot by dmesg0 · 2012-07-23 09:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by Andy+Dodd · 2012-07-23 09:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?