6 ms·

"My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?"

95 points by loy22 15y ago

whatswtlogin 15y ago
Charge 99 cents and hope it goes viral!
- tjarratt 15y ago
  The application already costs 99c and arguably the bookmarklet the author created did go viral (to the point where I'm still having friends send me links to the asteroids 'web site killer' every few days). One question on my mind is whether the stats are legit. If it's not some quirk in Apple's reporting system, maybe someone is maliciously hitting the link to the 'site of the day'. Wonder what the logs for that webserver look like - is every user agent an iOS device as expected? I haven't spent much time digging into the iOS app pirating community, but my expectation is that users are less likely to pirate if there's a free version of the app. What exactly does prompt someone to crack a 99c app and make it available to other users? Why would someone go through the trouble to get it that way when it's so cheap?
  - crag 15y ago
    You will never win the fight. So chalk it up as cost of doing business. And everything is pirated. I once had a friend of mine hand me a pirated copy of the PDR (the Physicians Desk Reference on CD). I still have it.. though it's out of date by now.
TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
Sorry, bud. That's the cost of doing business in software. Yeah, I guess you could dedicate tends of thousands of dollars to 'combat piracy' or some such nonsense. But time an time again as indie creators find out, you treat them kindly but otherwise ignore them. Of course, that you're on Reddit and HN, you have breached the first barrier: obscurity. If I had an iDevice, I'd try it out.
- loy22 15y ago
  Just a clarification : I'm not the original poster and this isn't a "Ask HN". I sent a message to the OP on reddit so he can find this thread. With all the talks about the benefits of the Apple Store, I just found this story interesting. Before, I thought that jailbraking was a niche practice and that the iPhone/iPad were relatively spared from piracy.
- crag 15y ago
  I wish EA would figure that out. I won't buy another EA game because of their DRM. Not so much that it has it. but it's garbage. I was one of the idiots that brought a legal copy of Dragon Age 2. Only to be locked out of my account (and game) for a 1/2 week due to the DRM.
muhfuhkuh 15y ago
I wonder. Since there are code snippets that can check to see if an app has been cracked/pirated, perhaps there is a way to inject an overlay serving ads on those who pirated. They can't exactly write a negative review on itunes because you can't rate an app unless you've purchased it.
- desigooner 15y ago
  I was wondering about the same thing.. If there was a way to identify the pirated copies, how could one possibly add some advertisements to those apps..
- dekz 15y ago
  Which would just be circumvented with another jmp.
  - pagekalisedown 15y ago
    True, but the vast majority of pirates wouldn't bother.
    - lawn 15y ago
      It would only take one to make it, the rest would then download that.
- yoda_sl 15y ago
  It's always the same game of cat & mouse with pirates. Most pirates on iOS are simply using one of the free tool and don't go far beyond that. I have implemented a technique for detecting pirated app and used it now in many apps: since then the piracy rate went down to zero which convinced that most pirates on iOS are simply using a tool and don't know what to do if the app they try to crack fail. I am sure that a true pirate will find way to bypass my security check but so far after more that a year of implementing my solution in all my released app I didn't find anymore pirated copy. If anyone is interested to learn what can be done, send me an email.
rkalla 15y ago
In other piracy discussions I've always viewed piracy as organic-marketing. Meaning if you wanted to nurture the piracy (e.g. no DRM, easier install paths, etc.) you would probably get your software in the hands of more people and just redirect what you would have spent on marketing to keeping it in the bank and track the piracy as marketing costs. I'll admit that is a rosy way to look at it, but I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first place" believers. Look at Windows, remember when 95/XP had 96% domination of the world's computers? That only started to come down when they got draconian with their DRM/activation/genuine windows/etc. I saw about half my friends move to Mac/Linux in that move (techie crowd) and I have to imagine they likely moved friends/family to their new platform of choice in the process. The people that were never going to be their customers went looking elsewhere for alternatives. Imagine how many of those pirated copies of Windows ran legit copies of Office or IIS (or any Windows-specific software) that were paid for as the result of the machine operating in a Windows-only environment. Them Microsoft clamped down on those users and squeezed them all out of the eco-system completely. No ancillary sales anymore from those folks; they are now permanent customers of other platforms. It seems to me that if you can accept that your software will be pirated up-front, you can get some mileage out of it. Put a mechanism in your game to check for announcements on a web server and display them. Maybe your game is 90% pirated, but when you released your NEXT game (or piece of software) you are suddenly announcing the release to 9x the audience you would have had if it wasn't pirated so heavily. You suddenly have direct access to all those customers that didn't cost you Google Adwords money or SEO to find. They already like what you do, they pirated your game. I really see this as an opportunity for this guy (and anyone facing the issue) if you stop thinking about every pirated copy as a lost sale... just like I wouldn't think of every egg I eat in the morning as a chicken I murdered. They were never your customers and those eggs were never full-grown chickens.
- teamonkey 15y ago
  > I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first place" believers. I think that's only true for X% of the people who pirate. Pro-piracy groups like to assume X=100% (that people who pirate would never be persuaded to purchase a copy), anti-piracy groups assume that X=0% (that every pirate can be persuaded to purchase a copy). The truth is that X is probably somewhere in between. Unfortunately there's no public data about what X really is, or even anything that could narrow down the range a little bit.
crag 15y ago
How are they pirating it.. unless they jail-break their phone? I don't do iphone apps, but I was under the impression Apple controlled the distribution?
- aikinai 15y ago
  Yes, the most common way to get jailbroken apps on your phone (Cydia) does not distribute pirated apps, but there is software that will allow you to sync pirated apps through iTunes. I don't know the details of what you do to crack an .ipa (maybe they're not cracked and are just copied from a legitimate purchase?), but I know if you install something that blocks the iPhone's checks, you can install anything through iTunes.
- ansy 15y ago
  I'm not sure if it works anymore. But with the App Store you can download on anyone's device after you pay for it once. For example, I buy Angry Birds, and then I log in on your phone and install Angry Birds on it as a free update. Then I log out of your phone, and Angry Birds is still installed. I didn't even know it was possible and I did iOS development. Then I saw someone do it and had a WTF moment. He just said that's how everyone he knows 'shares' apps. One guy gets it, and downloads it on everyone else's phone.
  - ralfd 15y ago
    But they can't update. For that you have to login into the account who bought the app.
  - Vivtek 15y ago
    Not in Tennessee, though!
  - adolph 15y ago
    The trick is that a particular iPhone can't run around to different people's computers slurping the apps they bought on different iTunes accounts. It can only sync with one computer/iTunes account. For example, my spouse and I could use the same purchased apps (if we used the same stuff) since we share a single iTunes account and library. I could not sync with my next door neighbor and use all their apps at the same time as I use my own.
agilo 15y ago
This post and the attention it garnered will bring him more customers than he'd hoped for (customers who will think about what he said, and maybe pitch in that dollar). Whether it was intentional or not, it's a clever marketing ploy I find.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- edanm 15y ago
  Are you serious? His app does no such thing! It's a fun little bookmarklet which gives users a little spaceship they can fly around a website, and shoot things at. It's for fun. It has nothing to do with actually destroying a website.
- kentbuckle 15y ago
  Um, I think you misread what he meant by "destroying" websites - this app seems to be a game where you control an "asteroids"-style spaceship shooting UI elements on websites (a mobile version of this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/kick-ass-bookmarklet-turns-the-web-into-asteroids/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/kick-ass-bookmarklet-...) Also, would Apple really approve an application used for DDOS-ing websites?
patio11 15y ago
Let me condense the conversation for you: Blah blah blah, free marketing, blah blah blah, wouldn't have bought it anyway, blah blah blah, DRM never works. Then you move your code to the server and this never bothers you again. This defeats piracy so well it works in China.
- trevelyan 15y ago
  Piracy might not bother him again... until his pirated downloads drop by 98% and paid downloads drop by 50%. And when he complains about this on Hacker News, patio11 tells him to spend more time blogging and working on SEO. ;)
  - patio11 15y ago
    My advice would have the desirable property of actually working.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - Roritharr 15y ago
      Why is success that is generated by some kind of act that is seen as "work" in a way better than success that is generated by the planned use of known forces (online piracy). I don't want to get all bruce lee, but isn't redirecting some kind of force, be it the interest of pirates or something else, always better than to work against it?
      - tptacek 15y ago
        There are moral judgements to be made about piracy, but I think the larger issue is that the pull-through sales from piracy are, in at least some people's opinions, wishful.
    - trevelyan 15y ago
      I've personally benefited from your shared insights into SEO here, but your reply above is glib and dismissive of a business strategy that works for a lot of people (including me). It emphasizes actively focusing on SEO and pursuing visibility in search engines instead of passively optimizing for word-of-mouth and visibility in channels like the App store. So no... I disagree that it would work. I think rkalla below offers some great advice. To which I'd add that if I were this guy, I'd give a basic version of the app away for free to boost legit downloads through the App store, brand the hell out of it (URL on load page), charge other app websites to be featured as the site of the day, and use various methods ("visit our website for a code to unlock extra content") to get user emails and build a distribution channel that he can leverage in the future. This requires a bit of work, but much less (I think) than is required by the non-freemium approach, and has the advantage of avoiding a focus on Google as one's key distribution channel.
iphoneedbot 15y ago
ON A SIDE NOTE: http://www.netdisaster.com/ http://www.netdisaster.com/ did the exact thing but got shutdown for Phishing. Isnt this the exact same thing?
dendory 15y ago
Wait, 90% of users pirating it? I just don't buy it. How many iPhone users jailbreak their phones? 5%? less probably? So those few users are 90% of your user base? These numbers just don't seem right. I would bet the real reason he saw a peak of traffic is something else. He bases his conclusions on how many people click a button, which presumably loads a URL on his server. It could be something as stupid as Google having found the hidden url somehow and indexed it.
- skidooer 15y ago
  I estimate 90% of the people who use my app have pirated it. That is based on server communication with the app that would not be easily duplicated by outside sources like Google crawlers. There is some margin of error: Each purchased copy is able to be installed on up to five devices, for example. But I find it to be still fairly telling. What is more interesting is that I noticed a dramatic drop in sales when it started to be distributed on the pirate websites. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but it does give some indication that piracy did affect me. For what it is worth, my app appeals to the geek crowd. From the data I have been able to acquire, I would say the majority of my users, including legitimate ones, are running jailbroken devices. That may help skew the piracy rates towards the higher end. Ultimately, I'm not worried about it. I wasn't banking my livelihood on the success of the app. It has made enough money to recoup my time investment, which is an added bonus. I do feel for the users who did pay for my app, however. I do feel that piracy has prevented me from spending more time making the product better for them. That is the real unfortunate side.
- wccrawford 15y ago
  It's not 90% of iPhone owners. It's 90% of the people using his app. In other words, 90% of his 'customer base' is people who wanted to try it for free, or didn't find it worth paying for, or wouldn't pay for it anyhow. It's a red herring. It's making him think more people want his app than really do... At least, at the price he's asking.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
gfodor 15y ago
There actually is a way to avoid piracy of iOS apps: build an app that requires server-side computation/algorithms of some sort and combine that with the signed receipt capability of in-app purchases. Basically this makes it possible for you to be sure that only a single user of your application is using a single in-app purchase at a time, by validating the signature each time the user launches the app with Apple.
intended 15y ago
This guy had made a bookmarklet for the same thing a short while back - I think he showed it off on HN too. (not sure - haven't tried looking for the link) You can get it out here - http://erkie.github.com/ http://erkie.github.com/
rawsyntax 15y ago
Build a free version of your app. I suspect some of the pirates want to try your app for free.
schrototo 15y ago
Judging from the other comments here this may be a surprisingly unpopular opinion, but if you're pirating an app that costs one fucking dollar you should be ashamed of yourself.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  Also, if you are cheap enough to fret about one fucking dollar, you probably would not buy it if you could not pirate it.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  It amuses me that all of the armchair economists come out in force, writing one page dissertations on why piracy is actually efficient for the market at large and creates opportunities while neglecting the fact that the app costs one dollar. One dollar. You pay more for a cup of coffee. All of their time spent being smart on the Internet (which is quite important, I'm led to believe) was more expensive than if they just bought the app (or three) to begin with. Ridiculous.
- mdolon 15y ago
  I'm not arguing for or against piracy but keep in mind that even at one dollar these apps can easily add up to a lot. My younger sister, for example, wants to download every cool looking app that she sees in the app store, be it useful or not. Add to that the huge influx of crappy $.99 apps that are not worth even a penny and you have enough incentive for people, especially teenagers with limited budgets, to pirate these cheap apps. I think in order to solve the problem, it's important to see and understand all sides of the equation, even the ones we don't agree with.
  - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
    It's almost as if people can't have everything they want! How unfair!
Tycho 15y ago
For a seond I thought he was selling a distributed denial of service attack app. Anyway, avoid clicking this if you don't want to get into one of those stupid 'piracy isn't stealing' arguments with people who make them totally po-faced as if it hadn't been said ten million times already.
junklight 15y ago
you give away 9 copies to sell 1. Perhaps you need to give more away and make it easier and then you'll sell more?
jeffool 15y ago
I'd like to point this out: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy To quote: The highest estimate I've seen is that 10% of worldwide iPhones are jailbroken. Given that there are so few jailbroken phones, how can we explain that 80% of game copies are pirated? The answer is simple -- the average pirate downloads a lot more games than the average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales.
- corin_ 15y ago
  That logic doesn't actually add up, though. Let's say 100 people own iphones, 10 of which are jailbroken. 9 of the jailbroken phones have downloaded my game, and one of the 90 non-jailbroken phones has paid for it. Maybe, if they couldn't download illegally, none of the 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 0% of my sales. Or maybe all 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 90% of my sales. It doesn't matter if only 10% of "potential" customers can download a game illegally, it matters what % of likely customers do it. And for some developers that will be much higher than average, for others it will be much lower.
  - jeffool 15y ago
    You're not wrong that "some customers are harder to sell to than others." But that's a problem anyone trying to sell something faces. Also worth noting is that he talks about the disproportionate number of games pirated to games sold across the board. What can you take from that? That pirates are far more likely to pirate a larger number of games than customers will buy. That's hard to prove, but if there are really that many more pirates in so many games, it certainly makes sense.
thedeuce 15y ago
Make something people would pay for then?
Gilpo 15y ago
Learn from this. Piracy offers valuable lessons to the budding entrepreneurial programmer. You learn about: consumer behavior, the nature of black markets, iOS piracy tools and techniques. Quick story: A friend of mine, Carl Lydon, created www.chamberofchat.com, which is an 3D chat-room for Harry Potter Fans that became popular in the early 2000s. This chat-room was promptly infiltrated by a nefarious hacker who assigned himself moderator status and began spewing filth, casting elimination spells, and harassing innocent chatters. At first Carl freaked out but got a hold of himself and re-built a few key modules of his multiplayer log-in code. By the end, the hacker went away, and Carl learned more about security than he ever could have from any one else. A gold-mine of lessons. A fine-art school graduate, he now makes a fortune programming multiplayer online games. Piracy is a gift. (edit formatting)

95 points by loy22 15y ago

whatswtlogin 15y ago

Charge 99 cents and hope it goes viral!

tjarratt 15y ago
The application already costs 99c and arguably the bookmarklet the author created did go viral (to the point where I'm still having friends send me links to the asteroids 'web site killer' every few days). One question on my mind is whether the stats are legit. If it's not some quirk in Apple's reporting system, maybe someone is maliciously hitting the link to the 'site of the day'. Wonder what the logs for that webserver look like - is every user agent an iOS device as expected? I haven't spent much time digging into the iOS app pirating community, but my expectation is that users are less likely to pirate if there's a free version of the app. What exactly does prompt someone to crack a 99c app and make it available to other users? Why would someone go through the trouble to get it that way when it's so cheap?
- crag 15y ago
  You will never win the fight. So chalk it up as cost of doing business. And everything is pirated. I once had a friend of mine hand me a pirated copy of the PDR (the Physicians Desk Reference on CD). I still have it.. though it's out of date by now.

TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago

Sorry, bud. That's the cost of doing business in software. Yeah, I guess you could dedicate tends of thousands of dollars to 'combat piracy' or some such nonsense. But time an time again as indie creators find out, you treat them kindly but otherwise ignore them. Of course, that you're on Reddit and HN, you have breached the first barrier: obscurity. If I had an iDevice, I'd try it out.

loy22 15y ago
Just a clarification : I'm not the original poster and this isn't a "Ask HN". I sent a message to the OP on reddit so he can find this thread. With all the talks about the benefits of the Apple Store, I just found this story interesting. Before, I thought that jailbraking was a niche practice and that the iPhone/iPad were relatively spared from piracy.
crag 15y ago
I wish EA would figure that out. I won't buy another EA game because of their DRM. Not so much that it has it. but it's garbage. I was one of the idiots that brought a legal copy of Dragon Age 2. Only to be locked out of my account (and game) for a 1/2 week due to the DRM.

muhfuhkuh 15y ago

I wonder. Since there are code snippets that can check to see if an app has been cracked/pirated, perhaps there is a way to inject an overlay serving ads on those who pirated. They can't exactly write a negative review on itunes because you can't rate an app unless you've purchased it.

desigooner 15y ago
I was wondering about the same thing.. If there was a way to identify the pirated copies, how could one possibly add some advertisements to those apps..
dekz 15y ago
Which would just be circumvented with another jmp.
- pagekalisedown 15y ago
  True, but the vast majority of pirates wouldn't bother.
  - lawn 15y ago
    It would only take one to make it, the rest would then download that.
yoda_sl 15y ago
It's always the same game of cat & mouse with pirates. Most pirates on iOS are simply using one of the free tool and don't go far beyond that. I have implemented a technique for detecting pirated app and used it now in many apps: since then the piracy rate went down to zero which convinced that most pirates on iOS are simply using a tool and don't know what to do if the app they try to crack fail. I am sure that a true pirate will find way to bypass my security check but so far after more that a year of implementing my solution in all my released app I didn't find anymore pirated copy. If anyone is interested to learn what can be done, send me an email.

rkalla 15y ago

In other piracy discussions I've always viewed piracy as organic-marketing. Meaning if you wanted to nurture the piracy (e.g. no DRM, easier install paths, etc.) you would probably get your software in the hands of more people and just redirect what you would have spent on marketing to keeping it in the bank and track the piracy as marketing costs. I'll admit that is a rosy way to look at it, but I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first place" believers. Look at Windows, remember when 95/XP had 96% domination of the world's computers? That only started to come down when they got draconian with their DRM/activation/genuine windows/etc. I saw about half my friends move to Mac/Linux in that move (techie crowd) and I have to imagine they likely moved friends/family to their new platform of choice in the process. The people that were never going to be their customers went looking elsewhere for alternatives. Imagine how many of those pirated copies of Windows ran legit copies of Office or IIS (or any Windows-specific software) that were paid for as the result of the machine operating in a Windows-only environment. Them Microsoft clamped down on those users and squeezed them all out of the eco-system completely. No ancillary sales anymore from those folks; they are now permanent customers of other platforms. It seems to me that if you can accept that your software will be pirated up-front, you can get some mileage out of it. Put a mechanism in your game to check for announcements on a web server and display them. Maybe your game is 90% pirated, but when you released your NEXT game (or piece of software) you are suddenly announcing the release to 9x the audience you would have had if it wasn't pirated so heavily. You suddenly have direct access to all those customers that didn't cost you Google Adwords money or SEO to find. They already like what you do, they pirated your game. I really see this as an opportunity for this guy (and anyone facing the issue) if you stop thinking about every pirated copy as a lost sale... just like I wouldn't think of every egg I eat in the morning as a chicken I murdered. They were never your customers and those eggs were never full-grown chickens.

teamonkey 15y ago
> I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first place" believers. I think that's only true for X% of the people who pirate. Pro-piracy groups like to assume X=100% (that people who pirate would never be persuaded to purchase a copy), anti-piracy groups assume that X=0% (that every pirate can be persuaded to purchase a copy). The truth is that X is probably somewhere in between. Unfortunately there's no public data about what X really is, or even anything that could narrow down the range a little bit.

crag 15y ago

How are they pirating it.. unless they jail-break their phone? I don't do iphone apps, but I was under the impression Apple controlled the distribution?

aikinai 15y ago
Yes, the most common way to get jailbroken apps on your phone (Cydia) does not distribute pirated apps, but there is software that will allow you to sync pirated apps through iTunes. I don't know the details of what you do to crack an .ipa (maybe they're not cracked and are just copied from a legitimate purchase?), but I know if you install something that blocks the iPhone's checks, you can install anything through iTunes.
ansy 15y ago
I'm not sure if it works anymore. But with the App Store you can download on anyone's device after you pay for it once. For example, I buy Angry Birds, and then I log in on your phone and install Angry Birds on it as a free update. Then I log out of your phone, and Angry Birds is still installed. I didn't even know it was possible and I did iOS development. Then I saw someone do it and had a WTF moment. He just said that's how everyone he knows 'shares' apps. One guy gets it, and downloads it on everyone else's phone.
- ralfd 15y ago
  But they can't update. For that you have to login into the account who bought the app.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Not in Tennessee, though!
- adolph 15y ago
  The trick is that a particular iPhone can't run around to different people's computers slurping the apps they bought on different iTunes accounts. It can only sync with one computer/iTunes account. For example, my spouse and I could use the same purchased apps (if we used the same stuff) since we share a single iTunes account and library. I could not sync with my next door neighbor and use all their apps at the same time as I use my own.

agilo 15y ago

This post and the attention it garnered will bring him more customers than he'd hoped for (customers who will think about what he said, and maybe pitch in that dollar). Whether it was intentional or not, it's a clever marketing ploy I find.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

edanm 15y ago
Are you serious? His app does no such thing! It's a fun little bookmarklet which gives users a little spaceship they can fly around a website, and shoot things at. It's for fun. It has nothing to do with actually destroying a website.
kentbuckle 15y ago
Um, I think you misread what he meant by "destroying" websites - this app seems to be a game where you control an "asteroids"-style spaceship shooting UI elements on websites (a mobile version of this: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/kick-ass-bookmarklet-turns-the-web-into-asteroids/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/kick-ass-bookmarklet-...) Also, would Apple really approve an application used for DDOS-ing websites?

patio11 15y ago

Let me condense the conversation for you: Blah blah blah, free marketing, blah blah blah, wouldn't have bought it anyway, blah blah blah, DRM never works. Then you move your code to the server and this never bothers you again. This defeats piracy so well it works in China.

trevelyan 15y ago
Piracy might not bother him again... until his pirated downloads drop by 98% and paid downloads drop by 50%. And when he complains about this on Hacker News, patio11 tells him to spend more time blogging and working on SEO. ;)
- patio11 15y ago
  My advice would have the desirable property of actually working.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Roritharr 15y ago
    Why is success that is generated by some kind of act that is seen as "work" in a way better than success that is generated by the planned use of known forces (online piracy). I don't want to get all bruce lee, but isn't redirecting some kind of force, be it the interest of pirates or something else, always better than to work against it?
    - tptacek 15y ago
      There are moral judgements to be made about piracy, but I think the larger issue is that the pull-through sales from piracy are, in at least some people's opinions, wishful.
  - trevelyan 15y ago
    I've personally benefited from your shared insights into SEO here, but your reply above is glib and dismissive of a business strategy that works for a lot of people (including me). It emphasizes actively focusing on SEO and pursuing visibility in search engines instead of passively optimizing for word-of-mouth and visibility in channels like the App store. So no... I disagree that it would work. I think rkalla below offers some great advice. To which I'd add that if I were this guy, I'd give a basic version of the app away for free to boost legit downloads through the App store, brand the hell out of it (URL on load page), charge other app websites to be featured as the site of the day, and use various methods ("visit our website for a code to unlock extra content") to get user emails and build a distribution channel that he can leverage in the future. This requires a bit of work, but much less (I think) than is required by the non-freemium approach, and has the advantage of avoiding a focus on Google as one's key distribution channel.

iphoneedbot 15y ago

ON A SIDE NOTE: http://www.netdisaster.com/ http://www.netdisaster.com/ did the exact thing but got shutdown for Phishing. Isnt this the exact same thing?

dendory 15y ago

Wait, 90% of users pirating it? I just don't buy it. How many iPhone users jailbreak their phones? 5%? less probably? So those few users are 90% of your user base? These numbers just don't seem right. I would bet the real reason he saw a peak of traffic is something else. He bases his conclusions on how many people click a button, which presumably loads a URL on his server. It could be something as stupid as Google having found the hidden url somehow and indexed it.

skidooer 15y ago
I estimate 90% of the people who use my app have pirated it. That is based on server communication with the app that would not be easily duplicated by outside sources like Google crawlers. There is some margin of error: Each purchased copy is able to be installed on up to five devices, for example. But I find it to be still fairly telling. What is more interesting is that I noticed a dramatic drop in sales when it started to be distributed on the pirate websites. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but it does give some indication that piracy did affect me. For what it is worth, my app appeals to the geek crowd. From the data I have been able to acquire, I would say the majority of my users, including legitimate ones, are running jailbroken devices. That may help skew the piracy rates towards the higher end. Ultimately, I'm not worried about it. I wasn't banking my livelihood on the success of the app. It has made enough money to recoup my time investment, which is an added bonus. I do feel for the users who did pay for my app, however. I do feel that piracy has prevented me from spending more time making the product better for them. That is the real unfortunate side.
wccrawford 15y ago
It's not 90% of iPhone owners. It's 90% of the people using his app. In other words, 90% of his 'customer base' is people who wanted to try it for free, or didn't find it worth paying for, or wouldn't pay for it anyhow. It's a red herring. It's making him think more people want his app than really do... At least, at the price he's asking.

deleted 15y ago

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gfodor 15y ago

There actually is a way to avoid piracy of iOS apps: build an app that requires server-side computation/algorithms of some sort and combine that with the signed receipt capability of in-app purchases. Basically this makes it possible for you to be sure that only a single user of your application is using a single in-app purchase at a time, by validating the signature each time the user launches the app with Apple.

intended 15y ago

This guy had made a bookmarklet for the same thing a short while back - I think he showed it off on HN too. (not sure - haven't tried looking for the link) You can get it out here - http://erkie.github.com/ http://erkie.github.com/

rawsyntax 15y ago

Build a free version of your app. I suspect some of the pirates want to try your app for free.

schrototo 15y ago

Judging from the other comments here this may be a surprisingly unpopular opinion, but if you're pirating an app that costs one fucking dollar you should be ashamed of yourself.

Derbasti 15y ago
Also, if you are cheap enough to fret about one fucking dollar, you probably would not buy it if you could not pirate it.
mattgreenrocks 15y ago
It amuses me that all of the armchair economists come out in force, writing one page dissertations on why piracy is actually efficient for the market at large and creates opportunities while neglecting the fact that the app costs one dollar. One dollar. You pay more for a cup of coffee. All of their time spent being smart on the Internet (which is quite important, I'm led to believe) was more expensive than if they just bought the app (or three) to begin with. Ridiculous.
mdolon 15y ago
I'm not arguing for or against piracy but keep in mind that even at one dollar these apps can easily add up to a lot. My younger sister, for example, wants to download every cool looking app that she sees in the app store, be it useful or not. Add to that the huge influx of crappy $.99 apps that are not worth even a penny and you have enough incentive for people, especially teenagers with limited budgets, to pirate these cheap apps. I think in order to solve the problem, it's important to see and understand all sides of the equation, even the ones we don't agree with.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  It's almost as if people can't have everything they want! How unfair!

Tycho 15y ago

For a seond I thought he was selling a distributed denial of service attack app. Anyway, avoid clicking this if you don't want to get into one of those stupid 'piracy isn't stealing' arguments with people who make them totally po-faced as if it hadn't been said ten million times already.

junklight 15y ago

you give away 9 copies to sell 1. Perhaps you need to give more away and make it easier and then you'll sell more?

jeffool 15y ago

I'd like to point this out: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy To quote: The highest estimate I've seen is that 10% of worldwide iPhones are jailbroken. Given that there are so few jailbroken phones, how can we explain that 80% of game copies are pirated? The answer is simple -- the average pirate downloads a lot more games than the average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which means they are losing at most 10% of their sales.

corin_ 15y ago
That logic doesn't actually add up, though. Let's say 100 people own iphones, 10 of which are jailbroken. 9 of the jailbroken phones have downloaded my game, and one of the 90 non-jailbroken phones has paid for it. Maybe, if they couldn't download illegally, none of the 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 0% of my sales. Or maybe all 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 90% of my sales. It doesn't matter if only 10% of "potential" customers can download a game illegally, it matters what % of likely customers do it. And for some developers that will be much higher than average, for others it will be much lower.
- jeffool 15y ago
  You're not wrong that "some customers are harder to sell to than others." But that's a problem anyone trying to sell something faces. Also worth noting is that he talks about the disproportionate number of games pirated to games sold across the board. What can you take from that? That pirates are far more likely to pirate a larger number of games than customers will buy. That's hard to prove, but if there are really that many more pirates in so many games, it certainly makes sense.

thedeuce 15y ago

Make something people would pay for then?

Gilpo 15y ago

Learn from this. Piracy offers valuable lessons to the budding entrepreneurial programmer. You learn about: consumer behavior, the nature of black markets, iOS piracy tools and techniques. Quick story: A friend of mine, Carl Lydon, created www.chamberofchat.com, which is an 3D chat-room for Harry Potter Fans that became popular in the early 2000s. This chat-room was promptly infiltrated by a nefarious hacker who assigned himself moderator status and began spewing filth, casting elimination spells, and harassing innocent chatters. At first Carl freaked out but got a hold of himself and re-built a few key modules of his multiplayer log-in code. By the end, the hacker went away, and Carl learned more about security than he ever could have from any one else. A gold-mine of lessons. A fine-art school graduate, he now makes a fortune programming multiplayer online games. Piracy is a gift. (edit formatting)