I'm genuinely curious and I apologise if this is a stupid question, I'm not a dev so don't really know what talking about about, I was just wondering if, when someone buys an app and installs it on multiple devices, does that show as a legit sale? I have two iPads and two iPhones so sometimes one purchase is four installs, it'll show as three players on gamecentre as it's different gamecentre IDs one three of the devices. I was just curious if the secondary installs counted towards the piracy figures or if they show as legit purchases due to license checking or whatever. I'm not sure about the idea that people who pirate wouldn't buy the game anyway, I know someone who, if they can dload it for free without too much hassle they will, be this books, movies, music games etc, but if something they want isn't available when they want, or they have to jump through hoops to pirate it, then they'll buy the album, app, DVD. I don't know if that's unique, it's not something I talk to them much about because I think it's wrong and I get accused of being up my own arse when I say so.
Piracy is just something developers have to live with - it's been there from the beginnings of gaming. I've been thinking of ways to lessen the impact for premium games. One idea I came up with is that you charge 99c for the game… that's basically the loss that the pirates will take. Then inside the game you let the players play a few levels (probably 99c worth of play) then you basically put a play wall up, explaining that games cost money to make and developers need to be rewarded for their efforts, and to further play you need to make an IAP to unlock the rest of the game. Say the developers intention was to release the game for $3.99 then the IAP would be for $2.99. By doing it this way the developer can use a server to check out the purchase history, thus stopping IAP crackers as well. My argument would be that say if there was a game with quality on par with Mario Kart then this actually costs real development money to pull off this and a game like this would never be released at 99c but the above system would actually work. My only concern is that people will gripe that they paid 99c up front and now the greedy devs want more money! And then write a bad review. But the long shot of it all is there is no hell in chance that a quality game can be made for 99c sale price but you can give them at least 99c worth of gameplay and use an IAP to protect the development cost. This is the only solution I could come up with and it makes sense for paid games with a premium price. Now you may say way don't you release it for the free charts and use an IAP to unlock the game. First off that system fails for free games - it's a know fact. And in the free charts you are competing against publishers like King who spend millions to get chart positions. The free charts are basically a shark pit where games get buried if they don't have big marketing budgets.
Chartboost analytics is showing 50x more installs than iTunes is showing sales, unless something is incredibly wrong with Chartboost or iTunes, piracy looks to be very bad on iOS.
Could this be partly because of one purchase being installed on several devices within a family, or friends who share an account. Obv it won't be anywhere near an extra 50 installs for one purchase, but I wouldn't thinks think an extra five installs would be too unrealistic, most people I know have one account between the parents and kids. Extra family installs may not be shown in those figures though, I dunno, I can't seem to find an answer if legit multiple device installs are counted in the non purchase installs. Even if they are counted in, those figures are still bad for devs who are being ripped off. Much much higher than I thought.
