Android Dev Claims Piracy Pushed It To Offer App Free

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eddieroolz

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By the way, just because you weren't going to buy the software does not make piracy acceptable for you. That's the anarchist mob mentality - I don't intend to pay for it, so I'll simply smash the window and take it as "evaluation purposes". Don't try to justify that.
 

killerb255

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This is a longshot, but what could very well happen is that developers will simply go toward Apple and Microsoft (assuming that Windows 8 takes off, but that's yet to be determined).

This is also assuming that Android app piracy is as "rampant" as this developer says it is.

Bottom line: if someone really really really wants something, and there's an easy way to attain it without sacrificing something from themselves, they'll get it.
 

killerb255

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[citation][nom]the_krasno[/nom]I pirated a lot of games. My steam game library has over 200 titles. I buy the things I want, I pirate the things I want to check out.[/citation]

I know the person that said "looks like Tom's is a haven for pirates" got voted down, but when you have statements like the above that get voted up 6 times, what else should people think?
 

BulkZerker

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[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]You are so wrong. Thats why there are demos of games. If you pirate the whole game then whats stopping you from playing through it all with never paying?[/citation]

Where are the demos then? I don't see a demo for MW3. Only thing offering demos that I can see are C and D rate (in terms of how much money was poured into a blender to make money smoothies, I'm NOT knocking the Devs at all here) games that 90% of the world hasn't heard of.

When demos went from the first 20-40 min of a game to a cherry picked section that showcases the abilities of the games engine (a benchmark) they alienate potential customers who are above window licking from downloading the demo. So instead, they (I included) download the game, play an hour or two of it and by then make their decision on if they're going to buy the game, or delete the torrent after playing about twice of what the demo's worth of gameplay.
 

xerroz

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All the games on mobile (Google Play, Appstore, etc) are crap anyway, so even a $1 isn't worth wasting for 20 minutes of "fun."
 

panders4

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[citation][nom]nhat11[/nom]So if the same game gets released on 2 different platforms one on droid, the other on the ipad and the ipad version does better (same pricing too and same exact game and performance). What factors made the ipad version sell better than the droid version?[/citation]

Because iPads are more prevalent and tend to belong to people that are willing to pay 30% extra? Except it never is the same performance in games either. Maybe if developers tried as hard to optimize applications for common tegra tablets like they do for shoddy i products. I buy plenty of apps from the Play store when they are worthwhile, but most of the common applications that cost money on iOS can easily be found for free on the Play store. For instance quality file explorers, terminal emulators, tethering applications, office applications etc. etc. can all be easily found for free, ad supported or not.
 

IndignantSkeptic

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[citation][nom]classzero[/nom]I see that Toms has become a haven for pirates![/citation]

I've been noticing for a long time now that the pro-piracy comments tend to get lots of thumbs up and the anti-piracy comments tend to get lots of thumbs down on this site. It's kind of a fascinating phenomenon.
 

killerb255

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[citation][nom]IndignantSkeptic[/nom]I've been noticing for a long time now that the pro-piracy comments tend to get lots of thumbs up and the anti-piracy comments tend to get lots of thumbs down on this site. It's kind of a fascinating phenomenon.[/citation]

It seemed fascinating to me at first until I thought about the smoke shops that sell bongs and the pawn shops that sell brass knuckles--they call them "tobacco pipes" and "paperweights" respectively. It's similar to calling pirated copies of software "backups": much of the time, it's a way to skirt around the law (although a bong CAN be used to smoke something other than weed, a pair of brass knucks CAN be used as a paperweight, and a pirated piece of software CAN be justified as a legitimate backup).

In other words, people here know they're doing something that's at best controversial, at worst illegal. Just like them "tobacco pipes," the payoff is more pleasurable than following any legal or other ad hoc standard.

So instead of people here being absolutely stupid and listing every piece of software each person here they've pirated (only to eventually get busted by the MAFIAA), they passive-aggressively state their intentions with the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system. Not so fascinating now, huh?
 

jerm1027

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[citation][nom]IndignantSkeptic[/nom]I've been noticing for a long time now that the pro-piracy comments tend to get lots of thumbs up and the anti-piracy comments tend to get lots of thumbs down on this site. It's kind of a fascinating phenomenon.[/citation]
Most people who are anti-pirates are corporate sheep. Online piracy isn't actually pirating, it's sharing. How did the original get obtained anyway? It certainly wasn't stolen from a secure server; it was purchased. And in every Read Me or .nfo file, there is always a message to support the devs. Now Piracy is also becoming more about power to the consumers since a popular trend to is milk consumers, inflate prices, cut quality and essentially screw over the consumer for larger profit margins.
 

zoemayne

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[citation][nom]the_krasno[/nom]I pirated a lot of games. My steam game library has over 200 titles. I buy the things I want, I pirate the things I want to check out.[/citation]
arggggggghhhhhhh mayteee
 

anoldnewb

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Piracy -
claimed damages = purchase price times # of copies pirated
actual damages = purchase price times # copies that would have been purchases at the sale price but were not because they were pirated instead

total of claimed damages for movies, music and software > GDP of the world
actual damages
 

bebangs

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would love to pay for these android apps as long as there are other forms of payment like sony's ps3 prepaid card or warcraft prepaid cards. Some are just simply too young to have a credit card. Others, dont like posting their credit card information.
 

bebangs

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would love to pay for these android apps as long as there are other forms of payment like sony's ps3 prepaid card or warcraft prepaid cards. Some are just simply too young to have a credit card. Others, dont like posting their credit card information.
 

choji7

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[citation][nom]garrick[/nom]why not have ads and generate revenue that way?[/citation]
Quite developers try to steer away from ads for mobile devices in apps as many ads that pop up tend to really drain the battery life of the device. Its not the sole reason developers would stay away from ad revenue, but it is one of the bigger ones. Others reasons may be that they don't like ads themselves, they have a better business model in mind (at least they consider it better), or perhaps they just simply dislike admob or iad.
 

svdb

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All these software developers complaining about piracy all use open-source software development tools they got for absolutely nothing.
 

IndignantSkeptic

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[citation][nom]jerm1027[/nom]Most people who are anti-pirates are corporate sheep. Online piracy isn't actually pirating, it's sharing. How did the original get obtained anyway? It certainly wasn't stolen from a secure server; it was purchased. And in every Read Me or .nfo file, there is always a message to support the devs. Now Piracy is also becoming more about power to the consumers since a popular trend to is milk consumers, inflate prices, cut quality and essentially screw over the consumer for larger profit margins.[/citation]

Well there have been several cases recently where the versions being 'shared' on the internet were unfinished developer versions distributed before the game was even being sold. That's pretty scummy.

I have sympathy for pirates only sometimes such as when the only way to get the proper product is to do something illegal such as in Germany or Australia, and the corporations deserve to take some blame for that for not standing up to bully governments, but how can corporations stand up to governments more when so many people just automatically hate all corporations for no good reason. People should be more discriminating about who they punish. In my experience, most game companies try to do a really good honest job, and when there is someone blatantly trying to scam people, anyone can spot it quite easily by looking at the review score or reading a few user reviews. There isn't much need to illegally try before buying anymore. Anyway I hope people who tried this game for free and liked it, try to spend some money on micro-transactions, just to support the developers at least.
 
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