Angry Birds Studio Happy About Chinese Piracy

[Andy Chalk]

Angry Birds Studio Happy About Chinese Piracy

Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka says the rampant piracy of Angry Birds merchandise in China actually makes him happy.

Piracy, as it applies to counterfeiting, copyright infringement and so forth, is not cool. It not only deprives content creators of income, it can also hinder future projects [just ask any PC gamer about that] and can lead to some pretty gross overreactions from companies determined to protect their work. [Just ask any PC gamer about that.] But despite the runaway piracy of Angry Birds [http://www.amazon.com/Angry-Birds-Plush-Bird-Sound/dp/B004RQAANK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320079006&sr=8-2] merchandise in China, Vesterbacka is determined to focus on the upside.

"There are a lot of Angry Birds products out there, but most of them aren't officially licensed," he said at the Disrupt conference in Beijing.

"The way we look at it is, of course we want to sell the officially licensed, good quality products, but at the same time we have to be happy about the fact that the brand is so loved that it is the most copied brand in China," he continued. "It's great for us to see the demand, and that's why we're building our own stores here. And actually we're building our first stores here, and not in Helsinki... We hope to have quite a few over the next 12 months."

There's no overlooking the fact that it's easy to be serene about counterfeit merchandise when your primary product is a runaway success, and Angry Birds is as much a phenomenon in China as it is everywhere else in the world. The game has been downloaded roughly 50 million times in China and Vesterbacka expects that number to double by the end of the year; global downloads are now pushing 500 million, making it "the fastest-growing brand ever," he said, outpacing heavyweights like Google, Facebook, YouTube and Skype.

The Chinese market is still second to the U.S. is size, but Rovio intends to take advantage of the fact that it's growing much more quickly. "We actually expect to do a lot of services, a lot of products, here first," Vesterbacka said. "It's a different approach to some of our competitors. We want to be more Chinese than the Chinese companies."

Source: GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-10-31-rovio-happy-with-chinese-piracy-of-angry-birds]


Permalink

 

[Ghengis John]

Ya know if they didn't charge 78 dollars for five of the mini birds this sort of thing might not happen as much.

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

So they're essentially banking on this one game to stay popular long enough to support it's own crappy ass toy bussiness model.

 

[scorptatious]

Well considering how succesful Angry Birds is, it doesn't surprise me that people would pirate it.

Kind of odd how Rovio is taking this in stride, but hey, as you said, it is easy to be serene about this kind of thing when your primary product is a runaway success.

Now it you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play me some more Angry Birds. Two more chapters to go!

 

[Booze Zombie]

Piracy has arguable effects, really. Effects to combat it seem to do more damage to income than the piracy in most cases...

 

[samsonguy920]

I would have to think that this is a case where he is looking too much at the bright side of life. China is one the most populous countries in the world, and since they are making up their own crap, he isn't seeing the profit he should get.
I am reading his words but it is sounding more like moronic insanity to me, really.

"It's a different approach to some of our competitors. We want to be more Chinese than the Chinese companies."

So he basically wants to rip off his competitors by pirating their goods, eh? Not to mention that statement comes off with a hint of racism, to boot.

 

[samsonguy920]

Piracy has arguable effects, really. Effects to combat it seem to do more damage to income than the piracy in most cases...

There is truth there, but his approach of just shrugging it off doesn't seem like the right tactic, either.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I guessing they think that the people who bought the fake stuff will eventually want to official merchandise.

 

[C-Mag]

Gah, China China China.... Why do you turn a blind eye to these goings on? First the extraordinarily blatant Team Fortress 2 ripoff (that even stole models and voice files directly from the game) and now this! It's starting to annoy me. A lot.

 

[Kahani]

So they're essentially banking on this one game to stay popular long enough to support it's own crappy ass toy bussiness model.

Yeah, seems a little shortsighted really. Angry Birds may be a fun, popular game, but it's still just one game and doesn't really have a lot of replay value compared to many. They may be rolling in money and success right now, but give it a year or two and no-one will be playing what will then be a rather old, dated game that has long since lost any novelty value. And when it comes to building dedicated stores, a year or two just isn't very long. I can easily see Rovio going the way of many other businesses who have a surprise success but don't know what to do with it, and end up losing it all again when they try to keep riding the same horse long after it's race is over instead of coming up with new ideas.

 

[Strazdas]

Piracy has arguable effects, really. Effects to combat it seem to do more damage to income than the piracy in most cases...

This.

The internal lack of inititive to tackle IP theft and counterfit products by the chineese goverment is really a sign for their dissregard of the properties of forigen companies as a whole. For exmaple the Chineese governement was cotent to steal code from a US software company in its internet filtering software. Its a real problem for many companies attempting to break into the market.

Well the official policy in china is "we dont care about intelectual property theft if it means better life of our citizens"