Without giving any detailed information, Madfinger Games announced that because the piracy rates of their game Dead Trigger were so high on Android, they made the game available for free. This sucks balls. I'm interested in more detailed statistics, especially where, exactly, the piracy rate is highest, considering you can only get paid Google Play applications in 31 countries, and then, often only with a credit card (which many people outside of the US don't have and/or use). It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if those piracy rates mostly come from places without paid applications support and/or with lousy payment options. In any case, Google needs to get its act together with the Play Store.
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Member since:2011-01-28
ze_jerkface,
"Tracking piracy isn't hard, just have the app hit a website post install with a unique id and then compare to sales."
I thought of this too, but such a trivial approach will flag some false positives especially with fair use rights like loaning the software, which really isn't copyright infringement at all. One could could categorically add it to "piracy" statistics, but it wouldn't be entirely accurate.
I don't know how many people loan out software on tablets, but on computers loaning out games is incredibly popular and if not accounted for might account for a significant portion of additional hits for bugged-software.
Does anyone have numbers, or know whether the publishers do? I hope they don't gloss over these details, but I have a feeling they might.
Member since:2012-06-22
How many people actually loan out $1 Android games? You can also do further tracking with updates and even if you wrote off 5% as false positives you would still have a majority not paying for the games. Android and pc gaming are rife with piracy, is that just a reality that is too harsh for some of you?
It's so pathetic that people here are making excuses for pirating $1 games, especially when data plans are a premium.
As I said before Android piracy statistics are similar to pc gaming. Japan consistently has low piracy rates while there are countries like South Korea where they are outrageously high. It's a moral problem, too many Westerners will pay $5 for coffee but think they are entitled to free games/music/movies.
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2012-06-22
Tracking piracy isn't hard, just have the app hit a website post install with a unique id and then compare to sales.
There was some Android dev that did this a while back and showed how piracy rates were high even in Western countries except for Japan. This interestingly mirrors pc gaming piracy.