4 ms·

Are you kidding me?

• sp332 13y ago
  If they're not customers, they don't matter. Whether they pirate your game or not, you're going to make the exact same amount of money from them - $0.
  • Ras_ 13y ago
    They matter if they pass on good word of mouth.
  • Steko 13y ago
    Some of them would have bought it. I know this is super tough but if I go out to a street corner and hand out free hot dogs the guy selling hot dogs next to me is going to lose business.
    • sp332 13y ago
      Oh, that's a different point. First, I'm not sure you can stop piracy. 2dboy tried releasing games with DRM and without DRM and saw the same rate of piracy with each. Then even if you could stop piracy, it would barely make a difference to revenue. They calculated that they could make 1 sale out of every 1,000 pirates. http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ And that's for a really good indie game like World of Goo. One thing I don't see anyone mentioning here is whether "Gentlemen!" is any good.
    • ihsw 13y ago
      Not at all, people associate quality with price -- especially when it comes to food. He can advertise on being a reputable and established source of high-quality food, while you cannot do such a thing without lying.
    • mikeash 13y ago
      Of course. But at the same time, your free hot dogs are going to attract a ton of people that wouldn't have otherwise come. 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.
  • orik 13y ago
    No one knows how many of the users would have been customers if the app hadn't been available through back channels. It's tough to convince someone to buy the product that you offer when someone else is offering it for free.
• ihsw 13y ago
  A pirated copy isn't a lost sale. 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.
  • orik 13y ago
    I don't think it's a very safe assumption that most of the people are in the first category.
    • ihsw 13y ago
      You're right, also I never made such an assumption.
  • tootie 13y ago
    You forgot the category of willing and able to pay for it, but steal it because they can. That is probably 80% of them. Ditto for movies/music.
  • jcromartie 13y ago
    Piracy is easy on Android, and harder on iOS, and the rate of piracy is much greater on Android. 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.
  • vubuntu 13y ago
    There is third category * 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)
• mikeash 13y ago
  Why would he be kidding? A lot of people just amass collections of whatever pirated stuff they can get their hands on. They would not have purchased the items otherwise. They have no influence on the creator's income. The question of why we should care about them is entirely legitimate.
• maratd 13y ago
  Don't know about the parent, but I'm definitely not kidding. 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.