On, I agree. Piracy leads to some lost sales but stopping piracy won't make all the pirates buy ur apps. Seriously, most people that pirate apps are kids that don't have their own money to buy apps. I'm not kidding, more than half of the itouch/iPhone owners in my school are jailbroken and pirate apps. I get 25 dollars a year to spend on iTunes stuff and that's on my birthday. A lot of people don't get any. If I like an app I will spend my 25 on it (ace combat, nfs, NOVA, real racing). If it's crappy (Hawx) I feel glad since I didn't waste my money on it. U guys didn't consider the opinion of one pirate. These opinions can obviously vary since some kids have no money to spend on apps. Adults have money and can easily buy apps.
Not being able to afford something isn't an excuse to steal it. I can't afford a PS3 or XBox 360 at the moment. I'm not trying to lift one from a Best Buy though. You and your friends have a device that costs hundreds of dollars. Many people would LOVE to have one, but can't afford one. If you can't afford apps, that doesn't give you a license to steal.
As only exception, we can make a few flag buttons so that there will be a translation into different languages. German pirate kiddies are not well known for their English... I can translate into German, btw. Err... how about getting a small job and WORK for money to buy iTunes gift cards? My employer won't give me money for iTunes cards just because I am a nice person... 2-3 hours of work a week would give you enough to buy a 10$ / 15$ card. Bought games are much more fun, that's how it is. You stick to them because you know that now they are valuable. And even I can't afford every single app. My family just needs a little money, too. As the devs families need their money. We have to plan with our money and can't shoot out 100$ per month easily. I also have to think about which apps I can afford and which are worth my money. Btw., when I was 14 - 15 years old, I asked my parents if they allow me to get a job (paperboy) 2-3 hours a week so I can buy the games I want. They allowed it and I made about 50$ a month to buy me games and other stuff I'd like to have. I had much more fun with the games than friends of mine with their stolen stuff - even if they had more cracked games.
That sounds great! My german skills are as follows: Ein kaffe.(waiting time). Nein zucker. (waiting time). Nein milch. Nice german lady: Schwarze kaffe?
Also, I think it's my turn to share my experience with pirating stuff. When I was I younger, I very much liked Tomb Raider III. I play games rarely, and Tomb Raider III was one of the first games I played when I first got a computer. I pirated it because the price tag was WAY OUT of my budget, living in a country where the game costed 1/4 th of an average monthly wage. Aside from that, it wasn't even available for sale here, and foreign sites won't deliver orders. A few years passed by and I was doing well, having established my game development studio. I was in a random store when I saw TR III on display for sale. I bought nice DVD box copy of the game. Never played it again or even open the box. I just felt the need to set things right. It was a game that offered me a great way to spend my time during it's period.
LOL - yes, that are the main skills you need. And - we have a lot of nice german ladies! About TRII and TRIII we actually share some memories - yes, the Tomb Raider games were my favourite games (besides RPGs which I love most) - I owned them all. And I still own them, they are in a box in the cellar. I keeped them because they were precious to my youth. And the best - I bought every single of them because I was earning the money for it. It made me proud somehow. Today it is still the same - I pay for the fun I have with games and I love that feeling. Hey, I even saved some of my money for 4-5 month to buy me a voodoo3 3000 gfx accelerator card! Hell, that was fantastic to play TRIII in pure high quality 3D! Another thing: the Ultima RPGs. My friends had the disc with the game. I had the box, the discs, a card, books, a poster, a moonstone and a lot of other stuff that was in the original box! Remember that?: That was value for money.
Hey, I am 39 years old, just became dad 6 days ago (for the first time) and now I am feeling like 20! I am feeling like I played that yesterday! I am sure you are much younger than me, Scott!
Here is the manifesto. It will be presented on an empty page, for maximum impact. No link, no info, no nothing. Domain name has also been registered: WhatIsPiracy.com
A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10% This can be translated as: "We have absolutely no way of knowing how many pirates would have purchased apps, so we will pull a random number out of our *** and act like it is scientific." I doubt the number is higher than 1.5% percent.
10% is correct value, if it's pulled from the arse of an "expert" 1.5% would indeed apply for our "arses" )
This is what disgusts me about this thread. Say for arguements sake it's 1.5%. What's your point? Does that make it okay? Why try and defend this behavior? You spend more on a Snickers bar than you would for some of these apps.
I'm very impressed with the direction this discussion has taken since my last post. Its seems to be more of a friendly exchange of ideas, feelings, thoughts and experiences now. We should do this more often Heres my thoughts: (in no particular order) To Trust & Be Trusted.......... This isn't really a "technical" solution but I feel that this idea of trust & trustworthiness is severely lacking and possibly (speculation) the whole reason piracy is so rampant in the first place. Case & Point: TVersity. If you go to their site you will find their product is completely free, no trial, no annoying reminders or any limitations or washed down features whatsoever. This is because they TRUST their users to make the decision weather to buy a license or not. I for one was very moved by this TRUST in me and I bought a license something I have never done before. I don't think I would have done the same if TVersity was the typical washed down limited and annoying trail version approach that has become so prevalent with software these days. Focus on innovation, not technical limitations: This really isn't a technical solution either and keep in mind that its all speculative but...... Success is not about how to make the most $$$$ with the least amount of effort/resources. I understand a lot of devs dont have much to work with but that doesn't mean there should be absolutely no vision when working on a project. Getting rich is not a vision!!! its the opposite, its basically means your to scared to take a risk and thus conform to the market, the influences and trends. A person with a vision wants to change the world. Vision is what drives people to set their own trends, to create new influences and take a market in a new exciting direction. A lot of devs just play it safe and follow the established direction; have some courage and take a risk dont worry about failing no ones perfect as long as you have the resolve to not give up you will ultimately succeed. You have to know your enemy, if you want them to be your friend: Those who put an honest effort into understanding piracy, who pirates, and why they pirate, will begin to understand more and more about their "enemy". I think it would be more wise and more ethical to turn pirates into "friends" rather then go to WAR with them. The question is....how? how do you leverage piracy to your advantage? what do you focus on? the only way to find this out is to understand more about piracy in general.
This has been stated many times before and I will state it again. The people who download games for free illegally probably wouldn't have bought the game if they couldn't download it for free. Therefore, Apple wouldn't have actually received the billions of dollars that they apparently 'lost'.
"club: an association or organization dedicated to a particular interest or activity" (New Oxford American Dicitonary) But if you really want one, I will build you a tree house. I believe this is true now, but only because you've recently taken out the bit about "supporting developers" from your club's description. Congrats, you've browbeaten someone into sharing, or at least validating, your impotent rage. Let's be clear and honest. Piracy is bad, always has been. If I could push a magic button and stop it I'd push it right now for you. I don't have a magic button. Getting angry about it doesn't push us any further towards a solution. Childishly demanding people share your rage or boycotting them does absolutely nothing towards improving the lives of developers or reducing piracy. If you want to have an honest discussion about piracy— how it can be reduced and why it happens, I'd be interested. But that isn't what your posts have been about.
@Jon: 1) It is neither an association nor an organization. 2) I haven't changed the stated goal at all. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not sure I even have the capability to change that if I wanted to, which I don't. 3) You are the only one here who seems to be in "an impotent rage". The tone of the thread was getting more and more constructive until you showed up to regurgitate nonsense. To summarize: your post was sad.
Piracy has effected many, I believe that it's acually 70% of big games are pirated, because first, they're probably over 5 bucks, and second, people don't want to pay hard cash for a developer. Now on games that are good, but arn't popular, probably has 10% of their apps pirated. Before a troll war starts, this is MY OPINION.
