Closed for business
Linked by henderson101 on Tue 24th Jul 2012 23:42 UTC
Google "I read earlier this week about a developer who made their Android version free after the $1 game was extensively pirated. Stories like this come as no surprise, but the industry press rarely deals with the core problem - and nor does Google. [...] Whilst the aforementioned story about the Android game didn't surprise me, it did horrify me. Android is designed to be difficult to make money from, and the core issue is that it's open - with the corrosive mentality that surrounds such openness."
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RE[2]: No lost sales
by Soulbender on Wed 25th Jul 2012 07:13 UTC in reply to "RE: No lost sales"
Soulbender
Member since:
2005-08-18

I've always thought that the no-lost-sales-to-piracy argument was pretty weak.


As an excuse you could argue that it is weak, that is true.
Where this does come into play though is when you try to estimate how many sales are actually lost to piracy and how much money piracy is costing. By counting every pirated application as a lost sale you are in fact inflating the numbers. It can make it look like you lost a load of money while in fact you might only had seen a modest increase in sales if there was no piracy.
It is of course rather tricky to know exactly how many of the pirate apps that would have been a sale but the fact that it's tricky is no excuse for inflating the numbers.

Reply Parent Score: 5

RE[3]: No lost sales
by ze_jerkface on Wed 25th Jul 2012 10:19 in reply to "RE[2]: No lost sales"
ze_jerkface Member since:
2012-06-22

Who is actually counting every pirated copy as a lost sale?

I see developers complaining about high piracy rates and for good reason.

Would all those Android pirates have paid for every game? No but they would have paid for some of them unless you want to tell me that they can afford a smartphone and data plan but not $1 games? You really think they would quit gaming? Of course they would not buy every game they pirated but they would buy some of them. Multiply that by a million pirates and you can see the amount of damage it does to Android when compared to the iPhone.

The problem with pirates is that they aren't contributing to anyone. They don't think it is a big deal on an individual level but as a group they are large enough to distort the market. A healthy market has enough paying customers to sustain development while Android has millions of cheapskates who can't cough up a freaking dollar.

Edited 2012-07-25 10:21 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3