Our most successful game is also our least profitable
gamasutra.com
gamasutra.com
"Many people assumed that we were really upset about this statistic. In retrospect, talking about the piracy numbers on twitter probably implies that we were unhappy, but in reality the number of pirates just confirmed to us that we made a game that people love to play! The people who are pirating our game are also playing a surprising amount, with really great engagement - these are no casual pirates just downloading because they can. So this confirmed to us that our game design is solid, and that we’ve made a super fun game that people enjoy. To be honest, that is really great. It’s unlikely that any of these pirates would have bought the game anyway, so we’re just glad that people are playing. Android makes piracy very easy, and thanks to that Gentlemen! is being played by more people around the world than all of our previous games combined."
And understanding of the problem that how would Chinese people pay for it anyway?
"This was our first Android release. We probably could have done more to avoid the massive piracy of our game - or, even better, convert pirate users into paid users. I think that Android apps are definitely going to get pirated no matter what...I can only dimly imagine the level of piracy that a truly successful paid app has. However if we had anticipated this situation we probably would have included some sort of in app purchase, perhaps to unlock extra levels or game modes. At least then the pirates would have the opportunity to pay us a little something if they were enjoying it so much - the main problem is that most of these pirates probably exist in a commercial ecosystem where the Google Play store does not even exist, and it doesn’t occur to them to buy any games from there at all."
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/YannSeznec/20130820/198453/Ge...
Target for sales was 2,000:
So far we have sold 1,114 copies on iPad, and 144 copies on Android.
Excellent reviews:
8/10 on Edge, 4.5 stars on Touch Arcade, and a 9/10 Gold Award on PocketGamer.
Android statistics:
144 copies sold, 50,030 copies pirated
Built with Unity, Android version only took 2 days of additional work so still worth it.
I'd like to know if they have telemetrics installed that show how many game sessions are being played on unique installs. The article also admits it's titled Gentlemen, which is a hit song. So maybe some hacked up version of Google Play provides universal search, this gets to the top, downloaded, opened, then closed and forgotten about as the user tries to figure out why the song didn't start...
So they wouldn't have bought it anyway? Whats the fuss about then?
He can advertise on being a reputable and established source of high-quality food, while you cannot do such a thing without lying.
If you hand out free hot dogs, you might go through five thousand in a day. If you weren't there, the guy selling hot dogs might sell five hundred. He certainly might sell less when you're around than when you're not, but you absolutely cannot point to the 5,000 people who took your free dogs and assume that they are all lost sales. The quantity of people who took your free dogs is completely irrelevant. All that matters is the delta between the seller's sales with and without you, which is unrelated to the number of people who take the free option.
It's tough to convince someone to buy the product that you offer when someone else is offering it for free.
Software/music/movie pirates usually fall into very few categories:
* never willing to pay for it
* willing to pay, not willing to put up with current and known barriers
The first category should never be assumed to be a lost sale, however the second could be assumed a lost sale.
The simple explanation would be that Android users pirate because piracy is trivial. Other more nuanced explanations may be that Android users are cheapskates, or hold strong beliefs against paying for software. I'd like to be charitable and assume it's just because downloading APKs is easy.
* Cheapos. Won't pay for it unless it is the only way to get something that they like. (it's hard to find pirated copies, the risk (legal, malware etc) is high etc)
If they weren't going to purchase the product anyway, how is it a loss? If anything, it's additional word-of-mouth advertising at no cost.
It's one studio sharing their experience with selling a game on Andriod.
Choice quote: "We have a lot to learn
This was our first Android release. We probably could have done more to avoid the massive piracy of our game - or, even better, convert pirate users into paid users. I think that Android apps are definitely going to get pirated no matter what...I can only dimly imagine the level of piracy that a truly successful paid app has. However if we had anticipated this situation we probably would have included some sort of in app purchase, perhaps to unlock extra levels or game modes. At least then the pirates would have the opportunity to pay us a little something if they were enjoying it so much - the main problem is that most of these pirates probably exist in a commercial ecosystem where the Google Play store does not even exist, and it doesn’t occur to them to buy any games from there at all."
But let's not focus on the fact that it was marketed poorly, nobody reviewed it on any game blogs, or the fact that there actually _is_ a market for this game (remember that Gabe Newell said that "Pirates are just Underserved Customers"). No. Let's focus on how 50,000 chinese and russian pirates, who can't use the Apple App Store, have somehow destroyed this developer.
How about the truth? A poorly-marketed and budgeted game with a forgettable name found an untapped/blue-ocean market in China and Russia. Kotaku probably can't get as many clicks with that tagline, though.
1) this is a life-cycle thing. the game has only been released for 3 weeks and has no marketing budget (i assume since it's only sold a couple hundred copies). that means, it's still too early to tell if the piracy correctly acts as "free advertising" or not. grassroots advocacy is NOT overnight.
2) piracy has been proven over and over again NOT to lead to lost sales by objective measurements. anecdote? sure! everyone is getting completely screwed when you take in anecdote. for examples, just google "game piracy lost sales" and read things from industry news sites (techdirt, for example) to developers (notch as another example) on why that statement is a load of crap. or, alternatively, you can just check this research paper outlaying the data and methods (pdf warning!): http://www.mit.edu/~ke23793/papers/Drahchenetal_paperID16.pd...
basically, we, as a community should simply wait another 5 weeks (october 1st, maybe?), then ask the developer for a post mortem to see if they've only made another 350 sales or so. and when they say "whoa! we've exploded!", we can say "but i thought piracy stole all your sales."
m3mnoch.
I wouldn't even have bothered to pirate it :P They're lucky they got 50k people to look at it imo. This method of playing went out... um... shit... with um... Crossfire? Hungry Hungry Hippos?
The smart thing to do would be to treat that as free advertising, and to milk the outrage to get good PR in markets that can buy it.
Also, try going freemium, with ads.
I.e. you can't really control what other people do, but you can accept reality and look for a way to turn it to your advantage.
Piracy is simply too rampant.
I intend to sell this game - no ads - and provide regular updates and improvements, along with "in-app purchases" (It's going to be a browser/FireFoxOS game). I have no desire to have this work leeched, and I want the user community to feel comfortable knowing that they are all generally people who pay for things rather than copying them without recompense.
lol. Except for the outrage that they expect to control what I can or cannot do with my computer and its data. Seems they made a poor choice for them.