iPhone Game Dev Credits Piracy for Doubling His Sales

[RvLeshrac]

Well, if you're not lying through your teeth, then I don't see the problem. Time to get writing those letters to the developers...

I once wrote a letter to Ubisoft. They told me to piss off.

I'm sure Kotick's team gives just about the same amount of a damn.

EA might care if you gathered a few million signatures on a petition, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Running out of publishers here.

I'd love to know what was in that letter you sent, and do you still have their reply?

I can't quote it to you verbatim, but it was along the lines of "I purchased your game and it destroyed my operating system, a bug of which you were aware. Please return my money in exchange for your game."

The letter I got back was, essentially, "Bugs are a fact of software development. We're sorry to hear that, but we can't offer a refund for bugs! Buy our next game, X!"

That's a pretty piss-poor response for a bug which caused the installer to remove "C:\Windows\*.*" as part of the uninstall.

Gamestop/Funcoland (I think my local store was still Funcoland...) pulled all the copies of PoR as soon as they knew about the issue, so at least *SOMEONE* was acting as a responsible adult.

 

[RvLeshrac]

Where do ppl get these number for pirated copies anyway?

Im serious. I honesty have no clue how that magic works.

I was actually gonna ask the same thing, how do they know how many people pirated it? Probably some way that I just haven't thought of.

Kudos to him though, now he can finally eat.

On iOS, you have lots of methods to track users.

For the PC/Consoles, those are numbers pulled out of someone's ass. They bear absolutely no relationship with reality.

 

[Gindil]

I like how people are already saying things against piracy here like how it's just 99cents. Well some people don't like apple or their way of dealing with things and they jail broke their device. And Apple being the big nazi company they are will do anything to screw your device over once jail broken so some people just go fuck it and pirate it. It's kind of a lose lose situation, are they not in the right but it's not because of the just price sheesh.

There's many reasons people pirate games, I pirate games to see if they'll run on my PC, you know because so many developers release demos to test it on your hardware. I'm looking at you Activision and Cliffy B. Once I find if it runs on my system I go out and buy it...


I'm sorry, let me repeat that for you people who don't think piracy makes me buy my games.

Spoiler

Once I find if it runs on my system

I go out and buy it...

I'm JUST saying guys.

That's a fuggin awesome collection...

That's a fuggin lot of money... Wow...

 

[Popido]

Silly game with bad marketing. No wonder that piracy doubled its sales.

...
Piracy yet again claims another victory! YARR!!

 

[Snotnarok]

I like how people are already saying things against piracy here like how it's just 99cents. Well some people don't like apple or their way of dealing with things and they jail broke their device. And Apple being the big nazi company they are will do anything to screw your device over once jail broken so some people just go fuck it and pirate it. It's kind of a lose lose situation, are they not in the right but it's not because of the just price sheesh.

There's many reasons people pirate games, I pirate games to see if they'll run on my PC, you know because so many developers release demos to test it on your hardware. I'm looking at you Activision and Cliffy B. Once I find if it runs on my system I go out and buy it...


I'm sorry, let me repeat that for you people who don't think piracy makes me buy my games.

Spoiler

Once I find if it runs on my system

I go out and buy it...

I'm JUST saying guys.

That's a fuggin awesome collection...

That's a fuggin lot of money... Wow...

Thanks, it's actually an older pic... And I typically don't like showing off, I just wanted to prove a point that I often buy games after I've tried it "borrowed" on PC so I can make sure it's valid. The point being that I like buying my games, but I also like being sure they'll run and with no demo, that's hard to do with PC.

Spoiler

Again old pic :\

 

[Low Key]

At least he's found enough good in the bad to see the silver lining. It's nice to read a story about piracy that isn't "Oh shit! My family and I will starve now!", because that certainly isn't happening as much as reported or companies would just stop making games.

Spoiler: Further Reading...

Piracy is still bad, mmmkay?

 

[Bad Jim]

Correlation is not causation. And if the piracy did cause an increase in sales, the increase in sales would lag behind the piracy spike. Instead, it is simultaneus

 

[MurderousToaster]

Stealing a game worth 99 cents is worse than stealing from Poundland. And I actually know someone who did steal from Poundland.

 

[Gindil]

Correlation is not causation. And if the piracy did cause an increase in sales, the increase in sales would lag behind the piracy spike. Instead, it is simultaneus

Pirates have friends, ya know...

 

[gibboss28]

I like how people are already saying things against piracy here like how it's just 99cents. Well some people don't like apple or their way of dealing with things and they jail broke their device. And Apple being the big nazi company they are will do anything to screw your device over once jail broken so some people just go fuck it and pirate it. It's kind of a lose lose situation, are they not in the right but it's not because of the just price sheesh.

There's many reasons people pirate games, I pirate games to see if they'll run on my PC, you know because so many developers release demos to test it on your hardware. I'm looking at you Activision and Cliffy B. Once I find if it runs on my system I go out and buy it...


I'm sorry, let me repeat that for you people who don't think piracy makes me buy my games.

Spoiler

Once I find if it runs on my system

I go out and buy it...

I'm JUST saying guys.

That's a fuggin awesome collection...

That's a fuggin lot of money... Wow...

Thanks, it's actually an older pic... And I typically don't like showing off, I just wanted to prove a point that I often buy games after I've tried it "borrowed" on PC so I can make sure it's valid. The point being that I like buying my games, but I also like being sure they'll run and with no demo, that's hard to do with PC.

Spoiler

Again old pic :\

...I have no words, that's just a a stunning picture. I also agree with the system requirements reasoning and the lack of demos too

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Where do ppl get these number for pirated copies anyway?

Im serious. I honesty have no clue how that magic works.

Indirectly through torrent tracking would be one way. Another way would simply be to have a piece of unobtrusive DRM that does nothing more than broadcast the fact that the game was pirated, but this would be difficult to determine in all cases.

 

[Scrythe]

Where do ppl get these number for pirated copies anyway?

Im serious. I honesty have no clue how that magic works.

I too, want to know how he obtained this information for his pretty little graph.

The whole time I was reading this article, I was distracted by the implication that this man is clearly omniscient about his pirates.

He should get a job for a big video game company. They could really use that info.

 

[Denamic]

If he found another way to get his app known, like, oh, I don't know, advertising, then I see no reason why his sales wouldn't double anyway.

Because advertising is goddamn expensive.
Piracy is free, global advertising.
It can reach more people than a commercial during the super bowl, and those costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per second.
Not to mention that people have a natural aversion to ads.
What's a better ad than one that potential customers seek out themselves?

 

[tahrey]

(Only skimming, sorry if this has already been suggested)

I wonder if this could be a spark for the rebirth of shareware. Lower cost software (so a lower "hmm, can I/can't I afford that/want it that badly?" barrier), far greater marketing reach thanks to widespread internet and MID ownership... so have a somehow crippled version of the SW out for free download (only one level, disabled functions extra to the main "draw", time/number-of-uses limited) and mention that buying the 99p (or whatever price) version would unlock everything.

You'd seem a very petty pirate putting the effort in to pirate the full version, then, particularly when a mostly-working version can be freely and legally distributed...

 

[Snotnarok]

I like how people are already saying things against piracy here like how it's just 99cents. Well some people don't like apple or their way of dealing with things and they jail broke their device. And Apple being the big nazi company they are will do anything to screw your device over once jail broken so some people just go fuck it and pirate it. It's kind of a lose lose situation, are they not in the right but it's not because of the just price sheesh.

There's many reasons people pirate games, I pirate games to see if they'll run on my PC, you know because so many developers release demos to test it on your hardware. I'm looking at you Activision and Cliffy B. Once I find if it runs on my system I go out and buy it...


I'm sorry, let me repeat that for you people who don't think piracy makes me buy my games.

Spoiler

Once I find if it runs on my system

I go out and buy it...

I'm JUST saying guys.

That's a fuggin awesome collection...

That's a fuggin lot of money... Wow...

Thanks, it's actually an older pic... And I typically don't like showing off, I just wanted to prove a point that I often buy games after I've tried it "borrowed" on PC so I can make sure it's valid. The point being that I like buying my games, but I also like being sure they'll run and with no demo, that's hard to do with PC.

Spoiler

Again old pic :\

...I have no words, that's just a a stunning picture. I also agree with the system requirements reasoning and the lack of demos too

Thank you x2. It was accumulated over the years, favors helped build this trust me..

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm really disappointed the Escapist Mag contributors are calling it "stealing."

Gezz people, stop sending me conflicted messages here is piracy the devil or not. Please tell me what to think!

I know! If this keeps up, we'll have to form our own opinions based on nuanced thought rather than extreme claims and dishonest statements screamed by both pirates and devs alike!

Can panic and chaos be far behind?

 

[gl1koz3]

It's also because not all "pirates", as business people like to call them, are brainless jackasses. They may understand that no more similar games will come without buying this one first.

That said, until the marketing people suffocate of their own tongues, some caution needs to be applied... often the products are not what they like to call them, thus the exact line of "stealing" gets blurry. So, who's stealing from whom? Better safe than sorry, as you can't quite return the game on the basis that it was boring.

 

[Mouse_Crouse]

I honestly don't see how he knows that the piracy itself was the cause and not the effect. Simple word of mouth would explain the jump without piracy, even with it's history of flat sales numbers. How often is a video put on youtube and it just sits there, but once a few people see it it goes 'viral' and explodes. Certainly not because people pirated the youtube video, because the right people saw it and passed it on.

 

[Ewyx]

.99$ just goes to show people pirate no matter the price. "i can't afford it" not even close to an excuse for this game.

How about the fact that most people don't like dealing with the AppStore and most people don't like the fact that apple is pretty bitchy about what you can do with YOUR cellphone and what you can't.

Maybe in this case, it's not just about the dev, but about Apple's bad business practices.

so lets get this straight they dont like their practices they dont like the store..etc so instead of using another product like say android or something they hack the iphone do what they want with it and pirate thus taking money not out of apples pocket *they spent the 300+ dollars for an iphone* but out of small developers pockets?

Yes, because even if the product is good in their eyes (Not mine, no idea why anyone would want that overpriced excuse for a phone), they don't like the restrictive policies that apple places on it, consequently they don't want to touch anything else apple does? Is it really that hard to believe? Maybe if someone would open an alternative market for apps... oh wait they can't because apple will make sure it'll have total control of YOUR device... wait what?

(...and no, I'm never going to own an iPhone)