'Unbelievably high' level of unpaid-for downloads despite game's $0.99 price
With 400m activated devices and another 1m added every day, Android is on a roll. So why are many games developers still wary of porting their iOS titles to Google's platform? Piracy is a key reason.
Developer Madfinger Games is the latest company to fuel the debate, after changing its Dead Trigger game from paid to free on the Google Play Store. The zombie-themed first-person shooter launched earlier in July for $0.99.
The most successful first-person shooter franchise of all time is the Call of Duty series, but, aside from a few low-effort titles, it doesn’t have nearly as big of a presence on the mobile front. That’s where the Modern Combat series comes in, often considered the best first-person shooters available for mobile devices. This series is the mobile equivalent of Call of Duty and even surpasses it in some ways.
Free Android games are crap, most of them at least. Digital detritus, designed to manipulate rather than to entertain. The worst thing about them is that they take something that is good, even innocent, and by charging for elements that should be found, earned or experienced, they turn what is good in gaming into something crappy. By taking advantage of gamers’ desire to play and by charging piecemeal and aggressively for the stuff of play, they not only suck the fun out of our playtime, they slap a price tag on what should be just fun. In short, they suck.
Hardcore Droid - It's happening slowly, but free Android games are slowly working out their glitches, as developers abandon terrible gameplay gimmicks like timers and gem and energy purchases for better crafted experiences. We still have a long way to go before free games reach the heights of expensive industry productions. However, that said, if you haven't done so already, pick up one of these free Android classics and Android’s vast potential will become clear to you
Yeah, my company decided to go the freemium route as well on Android. If everyone is insistent on pirating your games, what choice do you have? At least they can't pirate a game that's already being given away.
What I hate is the "pay to win" model that some freemium developers are going with. I like to think that our games are still complete and fun experiences right out of the gate (although ad supported, which I hate doing, but you have to make money somehow because god knows people can't be bothered to shell out 0.99 cents for a game these days).
If you like the game, here's some more options and new ways to play that might cost a couple of bucks. To me it's no different than offering a lite version as a demo and then offering a paid option. It just rolls it all up into one so piracy isn't your primary concern as a developer. Then we can get back to worrying about making a game people want to play instead of worrying how we're going to be paying our mortgages when everyone just rushes out to steal months of your hard work.
Maybe I'm not understanding something, so someone feel free to enlighten me. If lots of people are pirating it on the Android platform, but you're only selling it for 1 dollar, aren't at least some people going to buy it? Which would mean at least you'd be making some money instead of just giving up and making it free to play and getting nothing.
Why on earth would people pirate Android games? Really? They haven't heard of Killing Floor and Unreal Tournament? Who are these people who pirate Android games? They don't deserve to be called gamers.
I wish people would be more honest. 99 cents is no big thing to ask for. I hate DRM as well, I wish there were some mutually agreeable way to solve this. Not to be a hypocrite, I did plenty of pirating in my college days....but we are talking the days of eating at mcdonalds being a fancy night, and the games were $60.... Not exactly a lost sale. But pirating .99 cent game.....hard to construe that as anything but cheap. For shame