Piracy on ios/android

Phokus · Jul 29, 2012

Chris Pruett, the owner of Robot Invader (the makers of Wind-Up Knight on Android/iOS) had this to say about piracy (specifically app piracy) a bit ago on Twitter:

Lotta press about Android piracy lately. For the record, our piracy rate is about 12% on Android and about 15% on iOS. When Wind-up Knight for iOS was a paid app, the piracy rate was more like 80%. I think piracy is, as always, a red herring. You can't stop it, but as long as it's slightly arduous, it's not a lot of lost sales. Because a huge number of people who pirate software would never buy it in a million years. You aren't losing a sale to them. Piracy starts to matter only when pirate users can cost you money in other ways, e.g. network bandwidth and server cost. Yet another reason to be a free app in today's mobile marketplace.

Also, for both Android and iOS, close to 100% of our pirate users are in China. Those users can't buy things on Android anyway. The correlation is not direct. Piracy doesn't cause significant lost sales but it is particularly irrelevant if you are free.

Raduque · Jul 29, 2012

Does it count as piracy if you download an APK for a game that you paid for, but the devloper won't let you play it on your device because it's not on their magical list of compatible devices for the game, yet the game runs fine?

*glares at Gameloft*

stormkroe · Jul 29, 2012

Where's the flood of tears?

It would be nice if this thread became a place full of links to support apple/android as the most pirate-prone system as I'd really like to know (but not enough to search much on my own).

On with the QQ!

bearxor · Jul 29, 2012

I just think you'd have to really fine grain the results to get to anything meaningful.

For instance, their iOS piracy is 15%, but their Android piracy is 12%. Ok, win for Android!

But, nearly 100% of their piracy comes from China. OK, well, according to a quick search, Android ships on 2/3 of all smart phones in China. So, for every 1000 phones. 667 of them are Android, 333 are iOS (assume no other OS matters).

Now, 12% of 667 is 80.
15% of 333 is 50.

So even though the percentage is higher on iOS, the actual number is higher on Android. So, win iOS?

Fuck it. Neither of them win. There's nothing you can do to stop the people who are going to pirate your shit regardless of which platform you use.

My favorite quote from this article is:
"You can't stop it, but as long as it's slightly arduous, it's not a lot of lost sales. Because a huge number of people who pirate software would never buy it in a million years. You aren't losing a sale to them."

So true. The same thing I say to people who complain about HBO Go not being available to everyone. You're either not going to subscribe to it anyways, or you'll keep it the two months that Game of Thrones is on and then cancel it.

Posted from Anandtech.com App for Android

Oyeve · Jul 29, 2012

Raduque said:
Does it count as piracy if you download an APK for a game that you paid for, but the devloper won't let you play it on your device because it's not on their magical list of compatible devices for the game, yet the game runs fine?

*glares at Gameloft*

Wow, I thought the exact same thing. Sgs3?

Bman123 · Jul 29, 2012

This is stupid people steal anything and everything now a days

zerogear · Jul 29, 2012

I especially hate the 'Tegra 3' only games, when a lot of devices out there runs it fine. nVidia throwing money at devs again.

T_Yamamoto · Jul 29, 2012

Meh. *googles apk* *download* *install*

Win

stormkroe · Jul 29, 2012

zerogear said:
I especially hate the 'Tegra 3' only games, when a lot of devices out there runs it fine. nVidia throwing money at devs again.

There is a silver lining to this though. The fact is, some hardware simply doesn't have the ability to run nVidia's code paths. Imagine that they plop down the resources/money to help a dev code for special eye-candy that won't run on, say powerVR. Then, they go ahead and let people try to run it, but it crashes every time making most (not all) of the poeple blame it on nVidia's terrible coding. They just don't want to code for other people's hardware, and I would hope that you wouldn't want to be forced to do it either.
In the one extreme, it's just like physX on PC, on the other, it's just like AMD offering directx 11 support for games back when nV didn't have a directx11 card.
Anything that pushes the industry forward is fine by me

luv2liv · Jul 29, 2012

i didnt even know its possible to pirate on iOS....
let me google how now

mogydy · Jul 30, 2012

in IOS, they have apps to automate the piracy for you.

http://www.cultofmac.com/171332/ios-app-store-piracy-just-become-even-deadlier-jailbreak/

QueBert · Jul 31, 2012

mogydy said:
in IOS, they have apps to automate the piracy for you.

http://www.cultofmac.com/171332/ios-app-store-piracy-just-become-even-deadlier-jailbreak/

As does Android, they have multiple ones in fact. And on Android devices you don't even have to root or anything, just install the app and BOOM free paid apps.

Oyeve · Jul 31, 2012

So, this brings back the age old question. If I can google it and download it without going through hoops, is it really pirating? Seriously.

deathBOB · Jul 31, 2012

Oyeve said:
So, this brings back the age old question. If I can google it and download it without going through hoops, is it really pirating? Seriously.

I'm sorry, but I need to ask. When you said this, did you really mean it?

T_Yamamoto · Jul 31, 2012

luv2liv said:
i didnt even know its possible to pirate on iOS....
let me google how now

Jailbreak
Never download from file dude

Nothinman · Jul 31, 2012

Oyeve said:
So, this brings back the age old question. If I can google it and download it without going through hoops, is it really pirating? Seriously.

Of course it does, availability of something doesn't remove your responsibility to not misuse it. That was never an age old question, except possibly for people looking to justify their actions.

Oyeve · Jul 31, 2012

deathBOB said:
I'm sorry, but I need to ask. When you said this, did you really mean it?

I do not pirate, I just remebered when I worked in the music industry and the argument was that it was on the web so therefore no piracy was had. Which I found assinine.

Raduque · Aug 1, 2012

Oyeve said:
Wow, I thought the exact same thing. Sgs3?

HTC myTouch 4G Slide, GS2, Tf101. Bought a bunch of games that are approved for other devices with similar specs and/or same SoCs. Just about everything they make works on the Tegra2 powered Xoom, but refuses my TF101, and the games for the HTC Sensation work perfect on the 4G Slide. I've got an AT&T Galaxy SII as my primary device, which is Exynos, but they won't give me i9100 copies of games I've paid for. Yeah, I told them I have an i9100, but they just refuse to let me have the games I've paid for, even with proof.

Gameloft is not getting any more money from me.

Edit: I should mention the first phone I had capable of running their games was a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant.

A short list of games I've bought from them that they won't give me copies that run on my current devices:
Dungeon Hunter and Dungeon Hunter 2
Hero of Sparta
NOVA
Eternal Legacy
and another game that was an RTS that I can't remember the name of or find on their website.

Edit2: The RTS is called "Starfront Collision"

T_Yamamoto · Aug 1, 2012

Its called googling the APK and installing it

Piracy on ios/android

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