TL:DR; Added value (DLC, IAP, Ad-free, etc) over-time would increase sales, and a longer stay in the Top 10 charts. 99cents is nothing to an American, or an Eu

TL:DR; Added value (DLC, IAP, Ad-free, etc) over-time would increase sales, and a longer stay in the Top 10 charts. 99cents is nothing to an American, or an European, but to a Vietnamese, Chinese or an Indian those are not "Nothing". Also, the concept of credit cards hasn't quite been established in these still developing countries. Carrier billing, or other alternate mode of payments would help (Nokia had done some pioneering phone-wallet system) which could mitigate some of the problems which push a prospective buyer to piracy. Also, as shpoonj had said, apps can have various revenue streams, ads, IAP, dlc, etc. Also, including a free stripped down ad-supported variant of the app on the AppStore would discourage pirates as the same game would be available for free, literally at ones fingertip. Most developers view the AppStore as a "Write-once, Get rich" platform. Games don't sell themselves, marketing, positive reviews, word-of-mouth, virality, etc make an app to sell. The concept of sleeper hits doesn't exist in the AppStore, where a flood of new apps appear each day. The conventional methods of sustaining a product still hold key to success or failure. If you are looking to launch a 99cents app with no support, your best efforts will land you _upto_ 2-grand through a period of 3-4 months. Again piracy will always exist as long as digital media exists. The only way to beat them is to provide value which those pirates can't use, like multiplayer, group-sharing, social features, access to dlcs, etc. The pirates would tire after pirating an app once, the wouldn't possibly put in their efforts to "crack" apps for each possible update you did. And pirate himself would resort to just buying the game rather than pirate it to gain access to any product with great updates, value. Eg: "The mighty eagle" from Angry Birds. And to those pushing for a jailbreak check to disable Game center access, would only kill some sales. All pirates are jail-breakers, but not all Jail-breakers are pirates! Most hackers jailbreak their iPhones to do much more than Apple intended their h/w to do. Most prolific app developers come from the jailbreak community.