Now that a serious news feeder put some numbers on it, maybe people will start to believe it.
Update :
and for devil’s advocates, here is a genius article :
http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html
Yet again though, it’s based on speculation that people would have bought apps. In this case, they’re assuming that 10% of the total apps pirated would have been paid for. where do they get the 10% from?
This is what I hate about all these piracy arguments. What is this estimate based on?
Come on … 10% … :roll:
A so small, moderate estimation can’t be blamed, can it ?
I’m not saying that 10% isn’t a reasonable estimation, but this whole concept is what I have an issue with. Piracy is a problem, but trying to quantify the profit loss due to piracy is impractical in my opinion. We can measure pirated copies, but not the conversion rate.
The conversion rate is therefore a guess, and most of the time it seems like a randomly selected guess. They just say, well IF the conversation rate was this amount then you would have earned this much.
Then people who aren’t familiar with the issue use this figures for other news articles, and potentially legislation.
I never meant that 10% was an exact number, it is an estimation. As we will never know precisely how much lost sales it represents, and as piracy is a problem, we need an estimation. We need to measure how much would it be a problem, in order to conceive the type of action to be taken.
Would it be 10%, or 20%, or 5.78454% that would be the same problem. More or less lost sales, but still lost sales.
Now 10% is so ridiculously low that it is highly plausible. People don’t download apps just to download apps. It’s because they are curious and want to play them. So if you take away the ability to own these apps for free from this user base, it’s clearly not a shame to estimate that 10% of them will feel a void, and will adapt to the regular business model.
Don’t know, 10% is still higher than 0% in the light that anyone who wanted to buy it bought it. Its not like prices are an as major hurdle on the app store as they are with other goods (DVD that at least here with $25+ on release are high priced, not talking about the $40 for a BR or $80 for a new pc title)
Also, the estimate completely ignores the ratio of Jailbroken devices vs non broken.
As pirated apps are possible with jailbroken only, the whole amount of pirated apps would fall into that sector only, with a large percentage of them having it jailbroken for the purpose of pirating apps thus users that would never have bought it for sure.
But that all is kind of less important to me as a developer, not because piracy is no problem, but because dooming it, quantitatively measuring etc all does not change the least bit on it (as the article and the discussion on the 10% show 
)
To me the one and only thing that counts on piracy is that I decided to stop seeing pirates as a lost sale but instead as a potential future customer. I think that thinking will result in a better way to handle pirates then trying to lock them out with all might (its granted that you won’t be able to do so).
Out of my sight, business models for developers just finally need to change to 2010 too instead of remaining in the “good old days” (though piracy was at least a massive problem in data disk days, not just a problem due to unrealistic revenue expecations right from the start), using the viral marketing potential of pirate platforms, the mouth to mouth advertisement you can get from pirate boards, the far higher linking and search machine reference rate and especially the commonly much higher quality feedback you potentially can get through that path (the feedback on the appstore is normally between useless and “Give me a delete button” from the development usability point of view).
Business Models and Marketing Plans currently just ignore that by far too often, at least thats my personal and subjective feeling and impression.
Don’t know, 10% is still higher than 0% in the light that anyone who wanted to buy it bought it. Its not like prices are an as major hurdle on the app store as they are with other goods (DVD that at least here with $25+ on release are high priced, not talking about the $40 for a BR or $80 for a new pc title)
Also, the estimate completely ignores the ratio of Jailbroken devices vs non broken.
As pirated apps are possible with jailbroken only, the whole amount of pirated apps would fall into that sector only, with a large percentage of them having it jailbroken for the purpose of pirating apps thus users that would never have bought it for sure.
But that all is kind of less important to me as a developer, not because piracy is no problem, but because dooming it, quantitatively measuring etc all does not change the least bit on it (as the article and the discussion on the 10% show )
To me the one and only thing that counts on piracy is that I decided to stop seeing pirates as a lost sale but instead as a potential future customer. I think that thinking will result in a better way to handle pirates then trying to lock them out with all might (its granted that you won’t be able to do so).
Out of my sight, business models for developers just finally need to change to 2010 too instead of remaining in the “good old days” (though piracy was at least a massive problem in data disk days, not just a problem due to unrealistic revenue expecations right from the start), using the viral marketing potential of pirate platforms, the mouth to mouth advertisement you can get from pirate boards, the far higher linking and search machine reference rate and especially the commonly much higher quality feedback you potentially can get through that path (the feedback on the appstore is normally between useless and “Give me a delete button” from the development usability point of view).
Business Models and Marketing Plans currently just ignore that by far too often, at least thats my personal and subjective feeling and impression.
Exactly. The “10% of whatever” number has always been there and always will be. It’s been proven since the days of the Lenslock (google it) that DRM doesn’t work. Price point has also now been shown to be irrelevant. The “the war on piracy”, like the rest of these sold called “wars” will never be over or won. So move on, adapt and modify the business model. That is the reality of digital media. On the flip-side while we’re hearing all the whinging about piracy, Hollywood had a record year and people are still making a lot of money.
And besides there are 50 or more destroyers from the world’s most advanced navy’s patrolling the Gulf of Arden - now that’s piracy.
Yeah, I’m starting to agree about the unnecessary side of piracy war.
But either we fight it or embrace it, we have to deal with it. Which is why, imho, estimates are important 
(If it was 3-5%, I wouldn’t care honestly, even for using it as a viral marketing method)
Of course, but it’s just an estimate and one estimate is as good as another. How many DVD cam rips for Avatar have been sold? It’s impossible to know. Did they lose money? It still made over $1 billion in cinema ticket sales. Piracy (it’s not piracy, it’s copyright theft) exists. We deal with it by making a compelling product that people want to pay for. In Avatar’s case that was 3D. We change our view, our models, like was said earlier, into an opportunity. For example, if you know 10 people with iPhones and one of those people has a jailbreak with an app on it (10%) and they tell you how cool this game is and you buy it, that’s an opportunity. Did you lose a sale or gain a sale? This is a simplistic argument of course.
One person telling to a friend that he got an awesome game for free, you don’t you really think the other one will say “oh wait, I won’t ask you how to have it for free too, I will go and pay for it !”, do you ?
There are too many hypotheticals when it comes to the motivation of pirates. This is why I disagree with any estimations, because you have no idea, none what so ever, what would happen if piracy was reduced, or even eliminated. Some people do, in fact, just download for the sake of it. Getting movies they wouldn’t normally watch, or games they wouldn’t normally play, or software they wouldn’t normally use.
Sorry but who really cares about those numbers? There are cases which underline the argumentation from different sides. Everyone points out what he likes to believe in this discussion waving around with the appropriate stats.
Fact is that piracy has been part of the video games almost since the very beginning and you better should life with it, relax and try to do something which makes your product good and enjoyable, think of an alternative business model or a different payment strategy etc., so that you end up with more people buying your game, if that’s what you’re primary after.
I guess, as it looks now, in theory your best perspective for future anti piracy tendencies could be streaming services like OnLive, Gaikai, …
Oldskool way of thinking could be offering good, enjoyable and interesting work for a fair and also variable price - i still believe in this business model as well. ;O)
OnLive has to proof that it is worth anything.
To me from what is known so far, it primarily hosts the largest ever existing potential of cutting me as customer from all my legal rights due to the fact that I do not even get the game, just a client to play it somewhere else.
Such a system with “outsourced playing” makes sense for a flat rate service where you can play as long as you pay your subscription, but I’m definitely having problems to pay for a game license that I’m not getting at all.
I do like Digital Distribution a lot as it a.o. brought me a) opportunities as well as b) games which i otherwise wouldn’t have seen because they wouldn’t have been developed.
I feel completely fine with an account and the ability to download the content i payed for each time i want. Besde of this i can still store it on harddisks or whatever, it’s easy, cheaper, more comfortable, less pollution, fine.
If you inform yourself and think it through streaming services, if working correctly, offer quite some advantages and possibilities which you don’t get the way software is beeing developed and distributed today, offering this for both sides devs/publishers as well as customers. But of course this isn’t a perfect world as well and it also comes with some disadvantages.
But in the end i guess MMOs are worse! :O)
My app just got cracked today. As I write this the total amount of downloads of the .ipa has exceeded my total sales!
Thing is, I doubt any of them would have found out about my app anyways, so maybe it will act as a marketing thing rather than a loss.
Assuming that any percentage of pirated copies constitutes lost sales is just plain wishful thinking, IMHO.
The number one reason why people pirate software (or movies or music) is simply that they don’t want to pay for it. Number two is probably that they can’t afford it, but still want it anyway.
Worry not about the people who aren’t going to pay no matter what you do, worry about those that do! Are you doing everything you can to keep your paying customers happy? (hint: slapping anti-piracy warnings on legally purchased DVDs is not the way to do this)
I, too, doubt those numbers. They’re pulled out of a hat.
Just talked with Martin over this at lunch. We agreed that there are three types of piracy:
a) the cases where if something is available easily and free, you’ll get it “just because”. If it would cost anything, or even if it were some trouble, you wouldn’t, and not feel a lack.
b) the cases where it simply isn’t worth the money or trouble to you, and downloading a torrent is cheaper and easier than going to the store. Also, if there’s a risk that you’ll be disappointed (e.g. a game that you’re not sure about, and it doesn’t have a demo).
c) the cases where you get something you would like to buy, but can’t or don’t want to afford.
Now by my estimate, your “conversion opportunity” for case a) is very close to zero.
For b), making piracy harder to come by may work, but as iTunes shows, making the legal approach more convenient and cheaper will usually work better. You can probably convert these people with positive incentives better than by making piracy more troublesome.
For c), I believe that piracy actually increases sales for some applications. Every student in relevant fields somehow has a copy of Photoshop, Maya, etc. even though even the student editions are a couple hundred bucks. But that’s ok with the companies, because the pirate of today is the customer of tomorrow. Same with any startup that uses pirated copies initially, then buys the licenses once the fund come in. And don’t tell me there aren’t any of those right on this forum.
I believe that 10% may be a valid estimate for group b), but so is 20%, it’s both just figures pulled out of a hat.
And the important point is that I also believe that group a) is by far the largest. Or have you never been on a school yard where the latest games are exchanged for no other reason than that they’re the latest games? Any “unhackable” game will simply be missing, and nobody will care much, since there’s more than enough others to go around. What’s the chances of one of the boys going to the store instead? Pfft.
10% seems pretty high to me.
I’ve known a few people that used to be big into pirating games. Sure, that was years ago, but I’m sure the mentality is pretty much the same as it is now.
They pirate to pirate. Most of it is just to collect stuff. They might play some of the games that they pirate, but a bunch of them sit there never being played. They just like to have them.
I think 10% would be a reasonable estimate if it only concerned the games that these pirates actually play. But they probably only play about 10% of what they collect.
So in my opinion, 1% would be a better estimation.