2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.
Took all summer to port those games and I made maybe five bucks for the effort. Never again.
In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your sales.
Yes, I know that "it's not stealing", "it's not theft", etc. Beside the ethical/moral conundrum of piracy, the fact is that it destroys the market for small developers.
If it weren't, you wouldn't be experiencing this cascade of downvotes, so get with the program.
Disregarding this statement's general silliness, it is also downvoted. Now we're in a paradox. Downvotes mean you're wrong, so the statement that downvotes mean you're wrong..is wrong?
So depending on product category it might be a large drop (EU study finds -38% displacement rate for books) but it might also be a boost (EU study finds +24% for video games), and it is hard to say in general, since even a 90% piracy rate might only mean a maximum of 5%-10% lost sales (from the wolfire blog post). Either way it isn't at the level of "impossible to succeed".
If we are talking about app stores specifically, I bet a much bigger factor in (lack of) success is discoverability, both because your app is literally hard to find and because app store owners allow a flow of cheap clones to compete with your genuine app.
The other point I was trying to make is that the disappearance of "stand-alone" apps, not tied to a web service, is primarily driven by the fact that, this way, you can avoid piracy. You can offer a free-tier (that would be eaten by the piracy anyway) and sell (say) a synchronize, or additional features tied to a web service (so not printable).
May be it's not the only thing, but that's what (anecdotically) I hear from solo-indie-very small developers.
I fully agree with you on both the current discoverability problem and also with games piracy having a different, may be even not negative effect.
I would argue almost the opposite way. Users are now conditioned to expect the software to be free with ads of 99 cents. Both greatly lowering the cap on what people can charge for software due to expectations. Instead we've seen the rise of subscription services apps that have no business needing one.
Apple created a new reality where you pay 99 cents and buy to own. It made so very compelling, through general ease of payment flow that just works worldwide and through a large ecosystem of compelling hardware.
Then, subscription behemoths like Epic started crying how it’s all unfair. Of course, it is to them, but there is no way kowtowing to them is beneficial to small app developers.
Yes, Adobe, Microsoft or makers of viral AAA games absolutely benefit from piracy (that’s why they have actually tolerated it for decades): it helps their software penetrate the market and get more users hooked up on their ecosystem. However, to John Doe’s lifestyle business of a couple small niche or utility apps each lost sale is bread off the table.
In addition, piracy on iOS is great for major providers who do subscription services (a device where you can pirate means a device with more users, and more users means more monthly revenue).
Again, the people hit the most are the above-mentioned small time John Does.