Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?
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Here's a CNET article from 2007 touting the benefits of ads embedded in flash games, one of which is "Even if the game is stolen, even if it runs on a site surrounded by other HTML ads, the ad can still play in-game": http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9797689-2.html
I don't think this is especially novel; not for ads but I remember writing code back in the 90s for Java applets to check that they were being served only from the original website.
Ads pay out little but you can make decent money out of a site with traction. We don't even bother with ads on a lot of games at http://www.rocksolidarcade.com. The traffic is more important.
In terms of success? They took VC and grew very well, we bootstrapped our way to 5 employees without taking a dime. Total investment under a thousand dollars and profitable after a few months. In terms of raw game play counts, I'd bet money on us being ahead.
All in all, I'd rather be in their position not mine, but I guarantee you, the strategy outlined is not the reason why. And their greater success does not mean that I should not be allowed to have an opinion on what I've been doing successfully myself for years!
By the way, if one must always learn from more successful companies, it would be hard to argue the case for Zynga to switch their monetization strategy over to ads.
This part is interesting. Not so because of the concrete actors mentioned, but overall. It raises the question about the way the whole film/game/music industry battles piracy. Do You think they too could have found a better way, making it all to their benefit (and profit). Or have they done that already?
The music industry has all but completely lost the power over distribution and discovery, and these were the areas that allowed them to pick up a kid off the street and make him a superstar and make people listen to him. When you make somebody a star, it's a bit harder for them to negotiate their salaries, than if you find someone already talented, with a following etc.
The head of the graph is roughly the same height, but it drops off much quicker and the tail is much fatter. Yes, they've more-or-less successfully transitioned to the new reality, but it's a much, much less lucrative reality.
They could probably survive or solve any one of those problems, but there's no way to survive all four.
The film industry has to wrangle with piracy, but there's still a large entry barrier to make something that looks like it has high production values. Similarly, there are fewer new distribution options, because there's no real "films as a loss leader" business model. They are picking up the pace of innovation with stuff like HD and 3D and 2K/4K precisely so that they can move the goal-posts on production/distribution upstarts. You can throw together a simple romantic comedy with few locations and no special effects for a few hundred thousand, but a HighDef 3-D adventure with city-bending CGI and special effects is gonna set you back piles of money.
2K DPX is now doable on a (high end) NAS system where previously you needed a high end SAN with Fibre Channel, and Nvidia's Cuda makes a system that can do do "city-bending CGI and special effects" positively affordable.
but what does their patent mean? if i deploy this solution for my own games, or make a business deploying it for others, will they come after me?
Anyhow, I'm glad they found a way to deal with the problem. It's good when people are able to work things out on their own.
all start ups lose?
to the mine shafts!
I've seen it with Desktop tower defense. Can't tell I appreciate it, but it should help fighting theft.
Though, is it really that hard to crack? (wrt to code obfuscation) Any experience from flash developers?
Calls to the standard library and globals (like mouseX), etc. will remain as is. So my guess is that it would be not too hard to alter. But I'd be surprised if such simple measures wouldn't cut off the majority of leechers. Though as soon as one cracked version shows up on the internet, the whole maneuver is rendered futile.
This is indeed an interesting topic, especially considering the options a) run everywhere and show my ads (mochiads, cpmstar, ...?) or b) run only at my site so I get all the traffic (not sure if this is compatible with those ad-servers).
Well... this reminds me of the drm-struggle. Although the negative impact for the enduser is a lot smaller (dysfunctional swf on a leecher site?), you'd have to ask yourself how much time you'd like to spend with the arms race rather than implementing features, fixing bugs or writing new games. As a "content provider" there is probably no other way to keep sanity other than accepting theft to some degree.
It works against the most popular Flash Decompilers. So hackers will not be able to decompile my code. Although I think that experienced hacker can crack the file anyway.
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Toss in a frame breakout script for good measure.
Doesn't seem like a very difficult problem to fix.
Of course, maybe they could've embedded a "phone home" check or something.
I congratulate you for writing an interesting blog post and I can understand that one would like to obtain a monopoly if he's found a working business model, yet I consider such a practice to be highly unethical.
You are right in thinking that you deserve to reap the benefits after you've found a solution to that problem. You truly do. But you're wrong in drawing the conclusion that you've somehow acquired the right to shut out your competition.
Software patents are a sham(e).
Down here it is common for people to copy your code by reverse engineering or some other method and use it blatantly in their products, because they know that you can't go after them. What a patent does is that it gives that aura of security. I think that the indian govt. is trying to setup a fast track court to deal with patent disputes in order to be globally competitive. So, people are less likely to mess with you if you have that bit over there.
In his point of view it is a defense tactic necessary for the survival of his company. It is doubtful that his company would survive beyond a point if it doesn't protect itself like this. I know this is wrong in so many ways, but try to explain this to the trolls.
This ridicules the whole concept of software patents. Where they should protect innovation they simply protect the lack thereof. If it was the other way around, if they had such a great product that the competition had too much work to do, they wouldn't need a patent in the first place. This is how the rest of the world deals with the problem.
Now we know that having the best product is not a guarantee for success. And that's where that unethical edge-taking via patents comes into play.
The problem is that you're assuming that everyone is playing a level headed game with you. I was born and raised in India. Even though I grew up elsewhere inside my head, I've seen stuff that is so far out that I really couldn't believe my eyes.
I've seen my father pile money into a black bag for his boss in order to bribe a certain famous politician. Why? Well, they wanted to win the bid for supplying security gear to a certain infrastructural branch. I snorted in disbelief and I was promptly rushed out of the room.
I've seen people copy and paste code for a living in a company. I've seen family businesses that are hardly above being a gray mafia. I've seen people burn their books every year to evade tax, and I've seen tax officials get richer and richer all the time.
Do you want me to continue?
It is true that such stuff happens every where, but over here it is taken as the birth right of a company to do so. As long as they have money in their pockets no one can touch them. This is where scare tactics come in.
Whether or not his company is innovative is a question that comes into play only when other people are competing in the same way. Trust me he has done something extremely bold down here, but the trolls have more money and less expenses. They don't need to hire people to develop stuff. They just copy whatever he makes and bribe the officials so that they can get away.
If a patent deters them even one bit and allows him to thrive then I think it is logical for him to do so. Right or wrong comes into the equation when certain basic parameters are met.
Personally, I can't live like this and the minute I get an opportunity I will pack my bags and leave. I want to spend my time creating beautiful things not fighting trolls in the name of running a "business". So, in a way I applaud him for standing his ground and fighting to make it down here. At the same time I condemn him, but can I really blame him?
Thank you for sharing your indian point of view. :-) At first I failed to see how all those local issues make a difference. That is because the whole problem translates flawlessly to a global context and I focused that context alone.
It's not hard to imagine that the inhibition threshold is much lower in an environment like the one you described.
>>>your indian point of view<<<
That's the problem. I was born here. I've stayed here all my life, but it's like I've grown up elsewhere. Somewhere in my head. Try to understand something I don't represent the average indian view, and neither do I have any feelings of patriotism or stuff like that. I don't get choked up over national flags, parades or holidays. As George Carlin would say they are symbols and I leave symbols to the simple minded.
So, don't take me as a representative of India or anything like that. I just observe and move on. Earlier I used to get fired up, but now I realize; what's the use?
Anyway, thank you for replying.
We're a start-up, and we aim to innovate and build value. If we do patents, the objective is not to monopolize but more like an old Arab saying, "Trust in God, but tie up your camel".
:(