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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

> Ironically, yes, from people who don’t like paying for things. It’s a booming market on Android.

Can you be more specific? I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to.

> And yes, I absolutely believe that saying Nintendo and Sony are allowed to make a locked down device, but Apple is not, is an arbitrary double standard, setting up a potential legal victory for Apple.

What are you replying to? I didn't make any such claim in my comment. I wasn't defending the console business model, just explaining how it came about, which is very different from most computing platforms.

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A. Unlocked devices foster piracy. Piracy is also the biggest reason people complain about locked down devices and game consoles. It is also a fact that a pirated binary, stripped of identifying information, becomes easy to sideload.

B. The law makes no distinction between a game console and a computing platform, nor should it. There is also no such thing legally as a “general purpose computer” like I’ve seen some people try to define iPads as, so as to somehow justify iPad sideloading but not Switch sideloading.

C. I don’t buy the 30% cut argument, because we have a counter example: Steam on PC. How many companies sell their games directly outside of Steam? How many give you a 25% discount on top of that? Nobody.

> Piracy is also the biggest reason people complain about locked down devices and game consoles.

I can't speak for game consoles, but this is absolutely false with regard to iPhone lockdown.

Believe me, I would bet $1000 right now, that if unfettered IPA installation was added to iPhone, piracy would be more than 90% of installs. Some game developers have experienced as high as 98% piracy rates on Android through APK sideloading.

Why do you think mobile games are so full of ads? In part, because ads stick around and are profitable, no matter where you got your app. As long as sideloading files is so heavily connected to piracy, we’ll be lucky to see alternative app stores, but never direct installation on iOS.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/5hozvo/absolutely_...

"Or do we go waste our time trying to piracy protect our Android apps?"

So they have no copy protection at all? Well, sure, if you rely on OS lockdown as your sole copy protection, and the OS is unlocked, then of course you're open to piracy.

Yes, they do need to "waste their time", as it were, protecting their own apps. This is something desktop developers figured out ages ago.

Feels like victim blaming.

That's not what that term means.

So what? I'm not responsible for other people's business models.

It's funny, because I remember computing in the 80s and 90s, when most software came in a box and was bought from a store or through mail order. Piracy was a problem then, and companies tried to invent all sorts of copy-protection schemes. Some of them worked decently well, but most (all?) were eventually defeated. That didn't stop the world from having a healthy market for software.

Phones are no different. If Android developers have a piracy problem, they should develop strong copy-protection schemes. Sure, none of those schemes will be perfect, but they generally have the effect of moving piracy further out to the margins.

Otherwise: tough shit. If people pirate your app, explore avenues through the legal system to get them to stop. If that doesn't work, that's just a cost of doing business.

> Why do you think mobile games are so full of ads?

Because most games are not games, but clones of other games purely as vehicles to show ads. The goal is to show ads more than it is to be a game.

> How many give you a 25% discount on top of that? Nobody.

Because they are not allowed to sell the game cheaper elsewhere if they also want to sell on Steam. Their dev ToS require that.

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