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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Well, if you know the pirated copies from the licensed ones you can try to block in the server.

I assume they were naive in thinking that piracy wouldn't happen.

Changing the business model may be a possibility, charging for 'in game' goods.

There's starting to be a pushback against developers releasing games for free and monetising through IAP if appears 'excessive', and required for the game. I've seen more than a few comments levied about it, essentially there's a reasonably vocal group who don't want to pay more than 79p for games, and don't want IAP to be necessary for their enjoyment.

I don't think they were naive, but they probably didn't expect the piracy level to be quite as high as it would be. Doing server-side blocking for pirated stuff is reasonably difficult, as successfully detecting who's pirated and who's not can occasionally go wrong and burn the paying customers.

> There's starting to be a pushback against developers releasing games for free and monetising through IAP

If a free app is a demo and IAP is a one-time upgrade to the full version, then it's reasonable and perfectly acceptable. This is, arguably, what the IAP were actually designed for - a nextgen support for try-then-buy software.

The pushback is typically aimed at tacky milking practices - "a satchel of coins for $5.99, a pot of gold for $15.99, etc". You either release a limited, but self-contained playable demo, or a fully functional game. Anything that falls into a stretch between these two feels like a sleazy bait-n-switch kind of deal, hence the pushback.

Hmm... I personally don't have a problem with a game that requires significant ongoing expenses on the part of the company (e.g., servers) charging for that, whether through IAP or some other means. Otherwise you'd have to charge enough up front to pay for the servers in perpetuity (or at least as long as the expected lifetime of the game).

If the game is self-contained, sure, I see your point, but even there I'd make an exception for "major version"-level changes -- you should let your existing customers have a price break if possible, but maybe not give it to them for free.

That seems to be one aspect, but I've seen games getting railroaded for having a limited aspect with a pay to access additional functionality, and people saying "I'd prefer to have paid X amount for this app not IAP", even in cases where devs have made it free to get more traction.

I personally think companies releasing apps now should be bold enough to stake it and go "it's $10". Square Enix are, it seems to be working for them, sometimes.

For what it's worth I personally don't even look at free games anymore, because there's always a catch. So, yeah, I guess it's a form of a pushback due to the massive abuse of IAP that doesn't align well with user's genuine interests.

Payment models like the one Carcassonne do: one payment for each "expansion" sound entirely valid. We're not talking $0.99 items, more like $2-$5 per expansion.

I have paid for the app and for each expansion, as I love the game. Still a low fixed-fee, as opposed to the MMO "buy virtual crap" model that seems to give IAP a bad name.

Perhaps there's a middle ground? More like "pay to attend events/quests/goals where the MMO part is accentuated (think virtual concert), but "most other stuff is free"? Something that gets those who like the game more to pay into it gladly while still leaving something on the table to get the casual person interested.

>burn the paying customers.

I don't think they have a problem with that...

I imagine if they've pulled the app they'll probably have to go through a refund procedure, but I'm not 100% on that as it's a pretty rare and odd situation.

I think they could see the number of unique users vs number of sales. The article didn't mention if they could see any more detail than that though.

You nailed it. The most viable business models seems to be when a product is free to obtain and the revenue comes from advertising, in-product additions and/or selling services which are connected to a server.

I agree, but you cannot just take a product and apply a business model to it. If you want to milk IAPs, you need to design your whole game around it. Cramming ads onto a 3.5" phone screen isn't always easy either. Subscriptions (the fair model to pay for a server) might scare people away.

Looking at the top grossing games on the Oz App Store, I wonder if the trick is not simply "don't be a small player": http://i.imgur.com/9S1yx.png?1

Could a small team handle the traffic and meintenance needed for a freemium game?

Whether that's true or not, I hate most freemium games. Sell me the game or find a way to have me endure ads, but I won't be buying in-game points soI can make my brown cow purple or whatever. I also don't like spamming friends to earn the points needed to purplefy my cow. In general I've never met a freemium game that compelled me to pay after install.

Perhaps you're just impossible to sell too then?

Or rather you're so difficult to sell too that it's not worth the effort. Perhaps there are a load of people out there who will pay for the things you won't, even if they're relatively small in number they're potentially much more lucrative?

There's other models besides Zynga and facebook spam.

Giving the client software away for free and charging for access to official servers has been done for years successfully by Eve online and other games.

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