Another developer reports insane iPhone piracy rates

by Richard Mitchell { Oct 27th 2009 at 10:01PM }

Only a day after iPhone developer Smells Like Donkey complained of an 80 percent piracy rate of its game Tap Fu, another developer has made an even more alarming claim. According to Fishlabs, its latest release, Rally Master Pro 3D, achieved an astonishing 95 percent piracy rate in its first day of release. Fishlabs' Michael Schade told Mobile Entertainment News that the 95 percent piracy rate corresponds to "many thousands." When discussing whether the recently implemented in-app purchasing feature would help curb piracy, Schade was skeptical, saying, "I doubt that." He added, "We will see in the future how well in-app purchases fight piracy."

Tags: fishlabs, iphone, piracy, rally-master-pro-3d

Related From Joystiq

Darkest of Days postmortem has some bright spots
1 day ago
Developers deem piracy a problem, not a threat in survey
18 days ago
Developer claims 80 percent piracy rate for latest iPhone release
33 days ago

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 27th 2009 10:03PM

Here's a thought: Make your game worth paying for. I would bet that the best games have lower piracy rates than the crap ones.

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:06PM

not really. remember world of goo? it was an excellent game, but it was still pirated to hell.

Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 27th 2009 10:06PM

Then they have to embrace that saying 'We have to be better than free'.

Or Apple could, you know, secure their platform.

Lurkero @ Oct 27th 2009 10:08PM

Can we get past that excuse?

Here's a thought: DON'T STEAL

I don't like the taste of certain candy bars, but that doesn't make it okay for me to steal them from the store.

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:09PM

i think it's mostly just that iphone piracy is really easy and the apps are really cheap, so most people don't see any wrong in doing it.

Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 27th 2009 10:11PM

I don't bother pirating: If it doesn't say 'id Software' I generally don't buy it unless there's a demo. iPhone games in general disappoint me.

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:13PM

there are a ton of iphone games that i like, but i only buy them if they come highly recommended.

Cheesus Crust @ Oct 27th 2009 10:42PM

Here's my copy of Borderlands: http://i37.tinypic.com/33p653s.jpg

Cheesus Crust @ Oct 27th 2009 10:43PM

But I also BOUGHT the Steam version... so it's ok.

Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 27th 2009 10:44PM

Not sure why I was downvoted...I'm one of the strictest Anti-piracy people on the internet.

Bobby Kotick 2: Echoes @ Oct 27th 2009 10:59PM

How about they just stop doing stuff for the iPhone? It appears that it's quite easy to just steal the games and such.

Oh, wait. Is that why the iPhone is selling so well recently?

LegendaryRedass @ Oct 27th 2009 11:10PM

That was crass. These people are just trying to earn a living like me and you. It's pretty bad when somebody can't pay 2$ for a game.

chrisredfield31 @ Oct 28th 2009 12:20AM

I don't understand why you were downvoted either. It's well known (at least it should be) that the most marketed, whether viral or otherwise, games that have high production values, are games that sell the best versus sleeper hits that have a chance of flopping and are not very known. If they did a better job of marketing their game they'd get more sales. There's plenty of legitimate customers on the App store.

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:07PM

why not make your games as lite versions with the ability to pay to unlock the rest of the game for what the game would have cost? it could be a good way to curb piracy.

Mike @ Oct 27th 2009 10:08PM

no, its really not. Apple needs to introduce a trusty thing called "demo"

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:12PM

they did. it's called the lite version. like i said.

CH3BURASHKA @ Oct 27th 2009 10:07PM

Say, I heard Zune has an app store...

...sad it's not open to developers yet...

...but you devs should start making the apps now...

...Would you kindly start making Zune apps...

Special Agent Steve @ Oct 27th 2009 10:13PM

A man chooses.... a slave obeys.

CH3BURASHKA @ Oct 27th 2009 10:20PM

YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAA-

Oh, wait.

Number-2 @ Oct 27th 2009 10:08PM

bummer

Premature ejaculation man @ Oct 27th 2009 10:09PM

C'mon. While pretty poor, the majority of piracy arguments are about high prices, no demo or being unsure if it would work on the computer or some kind of stupid corporate decision (DRM, price increase, no dedicated servers, etc).

But iPhone games are dirt cheap. Jailbreaking your iPhone/iPod Touch just to get around paying $0.99 (or 6.99 in this case) seems a little too absurd considering if you've got an iPhone, you generally have money to burn.

why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 27th 2009 11:01PM

For many young people, it's pretty simple. They have plenty of time to screw around trying to figure out how to get stuff for free (even illegally) and little money to spend. So they pirate. End of story.

I've known young people who can convince their parents to buy them $80 DVD writers (when they were that expensive), or big hard drives to store pirated content on, but they can't get them to buy them music, DVDs, etc. as easily.

As these people grow older and have more income and less free time, they'll buy more stuff. But the problem is the record, movie and game industries are heavily concentrated on young people, and so they get hurt badly.

jake @ Oct 28th 2009 1:14AM

@why not the LS2LS7?
Nail on the head right there. I'm pretty sure a majority of these pirates are college aged or at least close enough and still dependent on their parent's income. They might not even have a credit card yet. That's means even if it's a dollar, if there is a "free" option, they will choose that. With most parents it's not just about forking over money to pay for entertainment, but they also scrutinize over WHAT you buy. So if there is something you want and the parents are unlikely to buy for you because of the content, then piracy is going to look very appealing.

Premature ejaculation man @ Oct 28th 2009 2:36AM

Never considered that. Good point

kyle @ Oct 28th 2009 3:48AM

Actually, you don't even need to jailbreak. Buying it once allows you to have it on 5 devices. You can easily share games with friends and get around buying them a few times...

josh @ Oct 28th 2009 1:40PM

"considering if you've got an iPhone, you generally have money to burn."

Huh? iPhones cost $99 now... that's a mass market price.

MRLN (The Comment God) @ Oct 27th 2009 10:13PM

Haha, iLOSERS. What's the piracy rate on the Zune HD? NEXT TO NOTHING!
oh what's that? darn, there's next to nothing on it yet. D:

/emptiness

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:16PM

and a good bit of the games available aren't worth the effort to pirate. :(

chrisredfield31 @ Oct 28th 2009 12:22AM

why hasn't this loser been downrated yet? I hate fanboys like this. It seems like the MS fanboys always gotta make their presence known somehow.

finnith @ Oct 28th 2009 12:43AM

Somehow, the second part of his comment leads me to believe that he is not an MS fanboy, and his comment history doesn't really show much bias at all. He was probably just being sarcastic.

why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 27th 2009 10:16PM

I dunno, could they be doing their math wrong? It's just hard to believe that there are that many people pirating iPhone apps, well, unless their sales are minuscule and so the number of pirates, although small, is still far larger.

In the end, isn't it weird to concentrate on the people you failed to sell to instead of those you did?

dagamer43 @ Oct 27th 2009 10:19PM

No, there really are that many pirates.

freaparn @ Oct 27th 2009 11:06PM

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that.

why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 27th 2009 11:21PM

Well, 95% is still crazy. That's 20:1. If you managed to sell your app just to 6% of the iPhone owners, it would actually be impossible for it to be pirated 95% of the time, since there aren't enough devices in the world to make it happen.

These figures have to have something to do with low sales as much as high piracy. Let's say 33% of iPhones are sold to young people and 100% of them pirate every app. That means that these games are sold to less than 1.6% of iPhone owners. That's a low sell-through rate.

Maybe these developers should try a little advertising, get the word out that their apps exist. That will raise the sales rates and thus make the percentage of copies that are due to piracy lower.

Jason Statham (Has a ps3 now) @ Oct 27th 2009 11:38PM

I don't see how it's hard to believe. It's so ridiculously easy to simply jailbreak your ipod, that it's not suprising that there are that many pirates.

Sheppy (of the Fidlious Clan of Wong) @ Oct 28th 2009 7:59AM

1. You're talking total userbase. Newsflash, not even the latest firmware is a 1:1 attach rate since Apple charges iTouch's for the upgrade.

2. It's pretty frickin hard to plan an advertising blitz when Apple holds the keys to the kingdom and CAN hold your game for several months if they want to. Advertising an iPhone game before it dropped backfired on a couple companies when the ads went up and Apple wouldn't elease the title for another 5 weeks.

3. People are fucking thieves. Advertising your game only gives it more exposure to the self-entitled fuckwidgets that are pirates.

DBuck_Eye @ Oct 27th 2009 10:18PM

Yeah, it's really disgusting. I have a bunch of friends at school with iPod Touches and I seem to be the only one not bragging about mine being "jail-broken" or how I "can download any app I want off of the App Store for free."

Sly @ Oct 27th 2009 10:20PM

same here.

Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 27th 2009 10:22PM

I did the jailbreak (this was in the OLD days. Before the 2G Touch and all the simple one click software. I think the App Store had less than 10,000 apps on it at that point.) and it just wasn't that impressive. And it sucked my battery down like no other. Went back to the standard FW in a week.

Jling84 @ Oct 27th 2009 10:22PM

I don't get why there are always excuses or so called "remedies" for piracy. There are people out there who are just cheap and will not buy games, music, or movies and will pirate those things whether they are 50 cents or 50 dollars. No in-app purchasing, no better game quality, NOTHING will change that. Apple just needs to shape up and shore up their system. There is no way to pirate games on PSN or XBLA, so it's definitely possible.

HighFiveJesus @ Oct 27th 2009 10:29PM

smells like donkey? fishlabs?

who the hell is naming these companies???

Asmerom (PSN: neon6plz) @ Oct 28th 2009 10:20AM

You want to know who?

It's Fetus Hemos.

No Kill Tayler @ Oct 27th 2009 10:31PM

Here's something crazy, maybe even a protip.
But, make it a requirement to update, and if they don't, hell breaks loose.

mocax @ Oct 27th 2009 10:49PM

piracy is a mindset.

you'd have to use mind-control or some lobotomizing thingy to change their minds.

Darth Bradwart, Dark Lord of the Sith @ Oct 27th 2009 10:58PM

Attention, Pirates!

*waves hand*

You should not pirate games. You should rethink your life.

I'm done here.

The Souljourner @ Oct 27th 2009 11:06PM

Oh please. 99% of iPhone users don't even know what jail-breaking is, let alone would be able to do it, or would want to do it. Saying your app experienced 95% piracy just means no one actually bought it. if 1900 people download a pirated copy and 100 people buy it, that's 95% piracy. In the scale of the millions who have iPhones, 1900 people is tiny.

Do I think they need to shut down pirates? Yes. Do I think the sky is falling? No way. I know 10 people with iPhones, and none of them have jailbroken it, even though 6 or 7 have way more technical capability that your average iPhone user and would certainly be able to if they felt like it.

Jason Statham (Has a ps3 now) @ Oct 27th 2009 11:39PM

I'm curious to see exactly where are you pulling your stats from.

nsdcx @ Oct 28th 2009 12:44AM

You don't want to know where they came from. Trust me.

emperorzeroxx @ Oct 27th 2009 11:31PM

where the heck do these guys get those numbers? oh yea that's right they pull it out of there a$$... once again low grade developers, stop blaming others for your horrible skills and try to make something worth paying for. If you want to complain, do it like Nintendo. They make amazing games, heck just look at the sales. Nintendo hasn't blamed piracy for bad sales ever, sure they don't like piracy and they obviously try to block it from there consoles, but they never said it was the reason their games haven't sold as much as they could. Lesson of the day, if your games suck stop making them. Instead of wasting your time trolling the internets and complaining all day you should take a few developing classes and learn how to make a real game that people actually like.

Jason Statham (Has a ps3 now) @ Oct 27th 2009 11:46PM

You need to realize that Nintendo is a pretty established developer so there's one of two reasons why they don't necessarily have to worry about pirating.

1. They have a massive following of gamers that will buy anything (well almost anything) that has nintendo's name on it.

2. It's difficult enough to try and pirate a console game that most people are willing to fork over cash to buy it.

Besides there's already a game that recently came out that pretty much proves your logic wrong, and that's World of Goo, a game that recieved great reviews and yet the developers complained that the pc version of the game was being pirated on a massive scale.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.