The huge success of an AppStore failure

First, before I get started on the piracy bit, there are a few things in this article that are cliche and offputting. The minute I saw these things, I was immediately unsurprised about their app's lack of success.

"GAMEized is one of the newest game development agencies to take the industry by storm, and we did it through an innovative marketing approach and solid game development"

There are very few iOS developers who are taking anything by storm. Rovio, Andreas Illiger, Newtoy...those guys took the app store by storm. The developers of the other 400,000+ apps in the app store...not so much. Simply saying something is "innovative" or "solid" does not make it so. What is "innovative" about GAMEized's marketing approach? What is it that makes their development so "solid"? If it their approach was so innovative, surely I would've heard about their game before this article showed up on HN...

"After several hours of research and development..."

Why is it that there are so many iOS devs that think that they can spend "several hours" doing anything and expect anyone to care? Name me one great app that has come along and was profitable as the result of "several hours" of work. Found one yet? Exactly...

"FingerKicks is an exciting and addicting game we developed for all iOS platforms (iPOD, iPHONE and iPAD). It’s simple to play and exciting to master"

This is how damn near every single app developer describes their app these days. If I see the words "addictive" or the phrase "simple to play, difficult to master" or some other variation, I immediately choose not to download it. Eli Hodapp from TouchArcade wrote a great a article about describing your app: http://a-13.net/post/8151551632/addictive-polished-gems

Anyway, to the piracy bit. I'm sure many people upon reading this story immediately began to imagine ways in which they curtail the piracy problem by implementing some unique piracy detection method or other approach to prevent people from illegally playing their game. Put those thoughts out of your head, it's a waste of time. Pirates will always find a way to get what they want for free. And for all of your efforts to stop them, all that will have happened in the process is that you will have lost valuable hours that you can never get back conceiving and implementing those efforts, hours that you could have spent instead making your app better. Does it suck that most iOS apps have a 90% piracy rate? Sure. Is there really something you can do about it? Perhaps. Is it worth your time to bother? Definitely not. Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, Words with Friends...those games are not at the top of the charts because of their innovative anti-piracy measures. They are at the top of the charts because they are fantastic games.

A common fallacy is the believe that pirated copies == lost sales. This is simply not true. There are an overwhelming amount of pirates who will get your app for free simply because they can. There are only a handful of people out there spending the time to actually crack the apps. Then, they post them onto sites like AppTrackr or Installous, and the majority just download the apps from there. If everyone had to actually crack the app themselves, the amount of illegal downloads would certainly decrease, because most people just can't be bothered to put that much effort into it. But when it's just sitting right there, ready to go, then hey, why not? Most pirates will not suddenly start paying for your app simply because they can't get it for free. It's also worth noting that the perceived value of these pirated apps is low in their eyes. They have no vested interest, and their level of enjoyment from the app is low in most cases (based on analytics data from my own game, most people who pirated the app never ran it more than once or twice, whereas most of the people who actually payed for the app came back at least several times to play).

As a point of reference, the guys from 2D Boy posted on their blog a couple of years back on the piracy rate of World of Goo (http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/). Lo and behold, it was sitting around 90%. In that article they have a lot of info backing up the oft-heard claims that pirated copies != lost sales, and relate several points on whether DRM is actually effective at getting people to pay for your game (spoiler: it's not). Since then, they have released versions of the game on the Wii, the Mac, the Xbox, and all iOS devices. And you know what? They made a killing. In fact, the iPad version outsold all of the other versions combined (http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/09/world-of-goo-for-ipad-outsell...). Instead of spending their time worrying about the pirates, they spent their time doing work that mattered, porting their work to devices where there is a significant audience of people willing to pay a couple of bucks for their game.

And you know what else? World of Goo is a fantastic game.

So, before the next time someone jumps to blame Apple for their lack of efforts to prevent piracy on jailbroken devices, and making them the scapegoat for the horrific failure that was their iOS app, maybe the lens should be turned inward and there should be some reflection on why exactly their game didn't attract paying users. Odds are, you'll find that your game just isn't that good.

P.S No doubt this is a deliberate move by Apple.

1) It has been repeatedly submitted to hacker news.

2) It is link-bait seemingly designed for hacker news

3) It is nothing more than a transparent Ad for their game that they "spent hours" developing.

4) Nearly every sentence of the article is hyperbole.

5) The author has no credibility, and undermines the benefit-of-the-doubt with every sentence.

6) It reads like it was written by a 13 year old.

Yet it is high on the first page of Hacker News.

- Apple would love to not getting jailbreaked, it's bad for them as well, yet it's not like they have a magic wand, I guess they do their best on this. It's quite pointless to blame Apple for that. AFAIK best track record is owned by Sony PS3 on this subject.

- Tons of people download pirated apps because they are getting it for free, they would never pay for them anyway.

99cents is nothing to an American, or an European, but to a Vietnamese, Chinese or an Indian those are not "Nothing". Also, the concept of credit cards hasn't quite been established in these still developing countries. Carrier billing, or other alternate mode of payments would help (Nokia had done some pioneering phone-wallet system) which could mitigate some of the problems which push a prospective buyer to piracy. Also, as shpoonj had said, apps can have various revenue streams, ads, IAP, dlc, etc. Also, including a free stripped down ad-supported variant of the app on the AppStore would discourage pirates as the same game would be available for free, literally at ones fingertip.

Most developers view the AppStore as a "Write-once, Get rich" platform. Games don't sell themselves, marketing, positive reviews, word-of-mouth, virality, etc make an app to sell. The concept of sleeper hits doesn't exist in the AppStore, where a flood of new apps appear each day. The conventional methods of sustaining a product still hold key to success or failure. If you are looking to launch a 99cents app with no support, your best efforts will land you _upto_ 2-grand through a period of 3-4 months.

Again piracy will always exist as long as digital media exists. The only way to beat them is to provide value which those pirates can't use, like multiplayer, group-sharing, social features, access to dlcs, etc. The pirates would tire after pirating an app once, the wouldn't possibly put in their efforts to "crack" apps for each possible update you did. And pirate himself would resort to just buying the game rather than pirate it to gain access to any product with great updates, value. Eg: "The mighty eagle" from Angry Birds.

And to those pushing for a jailbreak check to disable Game center access, would only kill some sales. All pirates are jail-breakers, but not all Jail-breakers are pirates! Most hackers jailbreak their iPhones to do much more than Apple intended their h/w to do. Most prolific app developers come from the jailbreak community.

Shouldn't most if not all iOS developers already know about jailbreaking/Installous? If your revenue stream is 100% hinging on selling the app (as opposed to in-app purchases or ads), then shouldn't you be cognisant of the piracy issue associated with a jailbroken iOS device and not naive enough to think that every copy of your app will be obtained legally?

I do think it's a shame that companies put a lot into creating a premium app for the AppStore, which gets pirated and downloaded for free. But I don't really see an end to this for the foreseeable future. Apple has already tried to make jailbreaking illegal, but it failed to do so.

What fantasy world are they living in?

After working with musicians for years, I've watched firsthand as they wait anxiously for their albums to appear on what.cd. It's a compliment. It's the best thing you can have happen. Because just like in the app store, you don't make money from selling your product. You make money from the opportunities it provides for you. Sometimes that means ads or getting hired to work for someone else... it doesn't matter. If your product is how you plan to get rich, you must be blind to the market.