Sorry, but no. That feature does not show up as pirated, and besides, what about people who have multiple devices? Like an iPhone and iPod Touch?
Not sure why you quoted that. Wouldn't the Pinch tracking also pick up multiple users within the same household and flag them as pirates, which is what this thread is about?
No that is the point. It tracks people using cracked apps not the number of apps. It underestimates the number of pirated apps because some pirates know how to bypass the check.
I think the process that Pinch claims to use is a much more reliable way to estimate the percentage of piracy, although as others have stated, it also has its flaws. My original post was not aimed at the Pinch process though. It was related to those who put the claimed percentage at 90-95%, which they base on high score submissions. I simply do not believe those numbers, and I think my explanation can account for a large percentage of the supposedly illegitimate players. A percentage around 60% makes more sense to me, but maybe that is just me being naive. In any event, as I've previously mentioned in the other recent piracy thread on TA, I don't really believe that reducing piracy would affect sales much.
As devs, we have access to our own data which might include multiple apps. We also have access to other devs we personally know, and to devs on these forums. With all these datapoints, it allows us devs to make an informed decision about how bad piracy is.
That is a real stretch. So I'm to assume that on a single day 4000 people downloaded the cracked .ipa file but didn't actually pirate the game? Also, its a far better measure than "20 of my friends have ipods and only one has his jailbroken". I offered precise details and you came up with the most ridiculous stretch of the imagination to discount them. I have to assume that you *want* to believe that piracy is harmless. I wonder what motive you might have to go to such lengths to believe that... Btw, I fully support and like Apple's policy of sharing apps between devices; I've got 3 iDevices in my household and share all of the apps we buy.
I posted stats a few weeks ago about a friend's app that recieved a huge amount of piracy. ~4000 cracked copies in one day vs ~20 sales. This was not based on high score submissions; it was based on the number of downloads of the cracked file (and measured from only *one* site btw, there may well be more). Your high score list can be a clue as to when piracy is starting to kick it but it is not the measure of how many pirated copies are out there.
First I do agree with you to some extent here. But it's kind of fun to play the devil's advocate: Let's just say you released your brand new game to the App Store. You post on the TA forums about it and probably can get about 100 sales the first day. Now the warez sites pick this up as a new app and immediately crack it an upload it. Let's say a 1000 people were able to download it from around the world on that first day. It is not a stretch to assume that one can get a 100 sales the first day (we did more than that on both our games). It is also not a stretch to assume 1000 cracked downloads since your new app will pop-up on the 'recently released' lists or front page of these warez sites. Of the 100/1000 legit/illegit users, let's say 10% submit a high score. So that is now 10/100 unique IDs already submitting a high score. Again these numbers are actually lower than our own experiences with our games. So 100/110 is 90% piracy. Of course this ratio goes down over time with more samples, and the cracked version not being on front page of ware sites. I don't think anyone would disagree. But I like to also throw in this scenario: You release a new game to the store. You get the same 100 legit sales. But let's say it is much harder to crack the game. So there should be less pirates, and consequently more people willing to pony up the $1-$5 for the game. This means you might be able to get 150 legit sales instead of the 100 (ie 50 of the 1000 would pirats decide to buy instead). Now on the App Store, a difference between 100 and 150 can be huge depending on which category your game is in, for the ranking. It could be enough to start a chain reaction to allow your game to rise to the top of the lists. Anyway, that is really a reach though. I do believe most pirates don't really want to buy the game, but rather just download because they can. But I just wanted to point out that even having extra 5 to 10 downloads a day from would-be pirates can be helpful for ranking.
I see the iTunes account sharing more as a gift given by Apple to its customers, I've seen only around 10-15% of players actually doing it (comparing iTunes Connect numbers vs independent devices connecting to our services with a paid version of the game).
