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Mac indie dev asks The Pirate Bay to keep a torrent of his software
As a software developer myself, I know how hard it is to see your product being ripped off. We have recently reported on how even $2 iPhone games (like Stardunk) or iPad games (like Aqua Globs HD) are not immune despite their low cost and closed platforms. Their developers have reported piracy rates as high as 38% and 50%, respectively. Mac developer Dmitry Chestnykh of Coding Robots recently came across a crack on The Pirate Bay for his journal keeping application Mémoires and decided to use different tactics. Out of curiosity, he downloaded the crack to see how it worked, and he did not like what he found one bit, ... but it's not for the reasons you might think. Reproduced below is a portion of the official complaint he has filed with the Pirate Bay, under the heading of "Notice of Ridiculous Activity" (keep in mind English isn't Dmitry's first language). It has come to my attention that the torrent located at [URL] is ridiculous. Not only it requires installing APE plugin, and generating keyfiles using some scary tool, it contains an [expletive] *WINDOWS* program to verify the validity of this release. The "How-to" section in the description is just incomprehensible, and won't be understood by anyone other than the writer of this description. Clearly, the "cracker" Minamoto did a lazy job and don't know how to crack software. It's an [expletive] SINGLE BOOLEAN SWITCH that validates the licence, it doesn't require any Application Enhancer tricks or whatever. I demand that you don't remove this torrent, so that people can laugh at Minamoto and CORE skills. However, I also demand the better crack to be made, so that it doesn't cripple the user experience of my beautiful program. Dmitry: for your vigorous defense of Quality, TUAW salutes you. [via torrentfreak.com]
iPad app dev sees 50% piracy rate
We've heard horror stories of piracy from iPhone developers before, but PocketGamer has news of an iPad developer also suffering from a surprising amount of customers who likely didn't actually pay for their software. Qwiboo says that its iPad app, Aqua Globs HD, is seeing about 50% of its customers on the OpenFeint leaderboards have obtained the app illegally. Vladimir Roth says that the number of users who have actually submitted an OpenFeint score is double the number of legitimately sold apps so far. Now, you can bring up the usual arguments against worrying about a number like this -- that pirates likely wouldn't have purchased the game anyway, or that many of them would pay if given the chance -- but that's a significant number, especially for a system that's supposed to be as closed as the iPad. Roth also says that piracy has been higher for him on the iPad than on the iPhone, and that pricing plays a big part. iPad apps tend to be more expensive (he says that they often don't provide extra functionality, though that obviously differs from app to app), and customers who prefer universal versions don't like paying twice for the same app. Still, the app in question is $1.99 -- that's hardly breaking the bank. It's disappointing to see that even with all of the authentication and verification built in to a platform like the App Store, piracy is still a significant issue.
