"Unbelievably High" Android Piracy Drives Dev to Free-To-Play

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maxben

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Jun 9, 2010
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J. Mazarin said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
Buretsu said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
By the way, $1 for an app isn't much. $1 for an app, sight unseen, when nearly everything else on the store has some sort of free demo? That's ridiculous. I know I wouldn't pay for anything like that, it comes across as a developer trying to make a quick buck off of a product he knows people won't buy if they get a chance to try it first.
Let me put it this way: Have you ever bought a candy/drink/snack that you've never tried before? If yes, then I completely fail to see the problem with spending the same amount or even less on an App you might not know if you like
And let me put it this way: all the other apps on the store have a demo, if not a completely free or ad supported version. If that one doesn't, I'm avoiding it like the plague.
And that's fine, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who'd be mad at you for avoiding it for that reason(save for perhaps a few too-obsessive fanboys/fangirls).

It's when people use that as an excuse to say "fuck you" to the developer and download it without paying for it that people are going to (rightfully) call them pricks.
Do you really not see that you're missing the point? Piracy is going to happen regardless, but why is the ratio so bad? Because legitimate gamers, like the guy above, would not buy it under the model they had. So 50 pirates to 50 paying customers is 1:1 but 50 pirates to 25 paying customers is 2:1. You can whine about piracy, but the piracy ratio can mean that the amount of pirates stays static but you have done nothing to encourage legitimate gamers.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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Elate said:
Usually means the game wasn't worth buying for the price they were asking, if your game is one dollar, that's saying a lot.
No, piracy happens whether a game is worth it or not. People think "do want" and take what they can.
 

SecondPrize

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Mar 12, 2012
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Owyn_Merrilin said:
...Shareware went away, along with demos...

$1 for an app, sight unseen, when nearly everything else on the store has some sort of free demo?
pick one
 

Owyn_Merrilin

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May 22, 2010
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SecondPrize said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
...Shareware went away, along with demos...

$1 for an app, sight unseen, when nearly everything else on the store has some sort of free demo?
pick one
Shareware is still gone on the PC. The Google Play store, which sells apps for android phones, not PCs, is primarily Shareware based. There's no disconnect there. The only flawed logic here is a dev thinking he can get away with completely skipping out on the shareware model when all his competitors are using it or a variation of it.
 

Lord_Jaroh

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Apr 24, 2007
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Buretsu said:
Lord_Jaroh said:
Piracy = Advertisement. Nothing more, nothing less.
"Hey! This game I downloaded is really cool! Let me tell you where you can download it, too"

Yay, advertisement.
Popularity has led the game to make more money free to play than it did by selling it. Seems that the advertising worked.

Just because it was pirated doesn't mean that they would have paid for it provided piracy was not an option. Piracy does not equal a lost sale. Pirates are not, nor were ever, customers. People who buy your product are your customers. Everyone else is a non issue.
 

ReinWeisserRitter

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Buretsu said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
Don't you just love it when the times change and business is forced to innovate?
No, because fuck those lazy, cheap-ass pirates who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too much to pay for a game.
Gonna have to agree with this one. It's one thing when people get shot in the foot for charging retail price for a digital game, but a fucking dollar? Come on, people.
 

weirdee

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Apr 11, 2011
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the kind of reasoning that you apply to 60 dollar games does not apply to 1 dollar games. at that point you are exposed as somebody that makes excuses for being an asshole and your principles mean nothing.
 

smudgey

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May 8, 2008
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theultimateend said:
I'm not saying YOU are stupid, but that example was so terrible it caused my brain to bleed. Brains don't even have blood in them, and mine just bled.

That's how stupid that was.


(But dude, you used hyperbole) No man...my brain bled.

I might even be dead now.
Brains DO have blood in them. Have you never heard of a stroke? Do a little research before you insult people.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Sep 3, 2008
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Elate said:
Shadowsetzer said:
Even a s***** game can give you more value than, say, a candy bar from a gas station convenience store. Are you saying that it's alright to steal candy bars (or anything else) if you feel they're overcharging for it?
Don't make me pull the "Pirating is copying, not stealing card." and I don't know about you but I get great satisfaction from candy bars.
It doesn't matter how you want to word the argument. You are enjoying a product that has an asking price without having the common courtesy of paying. The only argument against it being stealing lies in silly semantics; in all other interpretations it counts as stealing.

But, in an effort to avoid inflammatory rhetoric, suffice it to say that if you're going to pirate, do yourself a favor and don't lie about what you're doing to others - save such rationalizations for yourself. The only people who buy the argument are pirates.

In this case it is especially serious considering just how little I can purchase for a dollar. A complete list would include a few small and barely edible food stuffs, small bits of candy, or enough gas to propel my car 8 miles. Such a sum of money is so very trivial that I am honestly baffled when people refuse to do so. To put it in perspective, in order to be cost effective, I'd have to locate a legitimate pirate copy of such a product and perform any necessary steps to make an illegitimate copy work in a scant few minutes in order to actually "save" anything.
 

90sgamer

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Jan 12, 2012
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ZippyDSMlee said:
90sgamer said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
Elate said:
Buretsu said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
Don't you just love it when the times change and business is forced to innovate?
No, because fuck those lazy, cheap-ass pirates who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too much to pay for a game.
Usually means the game wasn't worth buying for the price they were asking, if your game is one dollar, that's saying a lot.
More like fuq those lazy, cheap-ass businesses who feel that ONE FUCKING DOLLAR is too little to pay for a game.

Change with the market not against it.
You are obviously a child or an adult with the mental capacity of a child. Grow up.
Or better yet, stay the course and go get a job that doesn't pay you anything (volunteer) and tell me all about how you plan to "change with the [employment] market" and pay bills.
Meh better than being a sheeple with no brain of their own.
Hate to say it but facts tends to side against your easy and false logic.
Haha, Sheeple. You sound like a unique radical free-thinker just like the endless hoard of other jobless teenagers living with their parents who spend their days posting on the internet. Logic cannot be easy or false. You have a long way to go before you will begin to sound more intelligent that a single cell life form. I wish you well on your quest to be taken seriously.
 

porpoise hork

Fly Fatass!! Fly!!!
Dec 26, 2008
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Kwil said:
So.. for all you people out there who are thinking pirating a $1 game is a lousy thing to do, but don't think the same about a $60 game.. where's the line, exactly?

Is it $2? $30? $49.99?

If it's wrong at $1, it's wrong at $2, $3, $4, $5 and so on all the way up the line. And the answer is always the same.. if you don't like the price, you're entirely free to not purchase it, and not make use of it. Hell, you're even free to write the developer and ***** about the price or plead for a different price for yourself. And who knows, some developers are cool enough to agree. But you don't get to decide the price point unilaterally.

Oh, and yes, Virginia, piracy is stealing, just like if you were to take someone's car, then re-fuel it and bring it back before they realized it was gone.. sure, you may have returned it, but you still stole it. This whole tripe of "If the person didn't lose anything, it's not stealing" is crap. Stealing was always taking something without permission. Whether the other person still had it or not wasn't ever a factor, and only became one once pathetic losers figured out that they might be able to rationalize away their theft of someone else's work.
Where is the line? well Jim's position on this pretty much sums it up for me.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/5342-When-Piracy-Becomes-Theft
 

Neonit

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Dec 24, 2008
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i blame inconvenience.

i wanted to buy an app for 1 dollar (or something along these lines) i really did.

turned out, google market (or play, or whatever you want to call it) doesnt accept paypal. it also doesnt accept iDeal. it doesnt accept ANY payment option that i have access to.
see, im from europa, here - pretty much noone has those credit cards.

still, i really wanted to buy that app. there was a way around, i could buy myself a prepaid "visa account" for only 10% extra (meaning get 9 euro for 10 euro - great deal!)
also, it expired in 3 months, i could not charge it (meaning SOME money would always be left behind, unless i bought something for exactly 9 euro)

but i bought that app.

it took me half an hour.

meanwhile, googling the file would take me about 1 minute.
meaning, spend half an hour for privilege of paying money, or do the hard way of 1 minute search for a free option. you see how this could potentially go wrong?

i dont try to justify piracy, but i can see thats its EASIER to pirate than to go "the legal way". so dont expect everyone to do the "right thing".
 

Clearing the Eye

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Jun 6, 2012
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Clicking a torrent and getting something for free will always be more appealing to most people, than paying any amount of money for that same product. There's no use arguing how trivial $1 seems to you--they just don't care. Free > $1.

Having a soul is hard when the internet makes it easy not to, lol. Not to mention the porn! Sweet, sweet porn.
 

The Lugz

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Apr 23, 2011
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Shadowsetzer said:
Elate said:
Shadowsetzer said:
Even a s***** game can give you more value than, say, a candy bar from a gas station convenience store. Are you saying that it's alright to steal candy bars (or anything else) if you feel they're overcharging for it?
Don't make me pull the "Pirating is copying, not stealing card." and I don't know about you but I get great satisfaction from candy bars.
Except that when you buy a game (or any piece of software), you're not simply buying a copy of the program; you're buying the right to use that program. When someone makes a copy of it and uses it without buying it, they're stealing it in the same way that someone who takes something off of a store shelf and walks off with it is stealing it - they're using it when they don't have the right to.
copying software is not theft
theft is taking something someone has so they no longer have it

in your candy-bar instance, stealing it is physically removing it, so the store cannot then sell it to anyone
(* guaranteeing lost profits )
'copying it' would be taking a picture of one's ingredients in a store and making your own at home whilst that wouldn't be encouraged i can see no way that it is illegal
(* even though it may logically reduce profits of the store by not being able to specifically sell an item to You, the item is still available to sell to someone else )

* monetary difference to the store.

so what is the issue?:
copying software is an intellectual property violation
as it's physical representation has obviously been reproduced with different materials
( ie, reproducing it to a cd or your hard-drive ect. ) it is impossible to be victim of 'theft'
if it weren't reproduced, then there is no instance of copyright infringement by definition

my personal interpretation is;
you are purchasing a license to experience a copy downloaded to your brain via an electronic device
following that logic seems to be the easiest way to avoid the theft/copyright infringement weirdness

( this is basically how dd's like steam work, everything is tied to your account in a
one-user-licence arrangement )
 

Legion

Were it so easy
Oct 2, 2008
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Elate said:
Shadowsetzer said:
Even a s***** game can give you more value than, say, a candy bar from a gas station convenience store. Are you saying that it's alright to steal candy bars (or anything else) if you feel they're overcharging for it?
Don't make me pull the "Pirating is copying, not stealing card." and I don't know about you but I get great satisfaction from candy bars.
You don't pay for digital items, you pay for the right to use them.

It is wrong, and unfair and deserving of being a crime if you get a copy without paying regardless of how you choose to word it.