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Report: Piracy has cost Apple, iPhone devs $450 million
Update: Reader Phillip wrote in to tell us some outlets are concerned with the figures 24/7 Wall St. has presented. While we never claim these figures are 100 percent accurate (we attribute everything to their report, after all), we felt it necessary to point out some other takes on the info. Both Tech Dirt and Ars Technica are calling into question the figures, while our own TUAW suggests these figures are merely assumptions and could very well be "wide of the mark." Original post: Score several million for the scurvy dogs. According to a piece over at 24/7 Wall St., the Apple App Store has lost over $450 million in profits to piracy since opening its virtual doors in July 2008. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconagh estimates that the App store has had three billion items downloaded by users since its inception, with only 13 to 21 percent (510 million) of those downloads being paid Apps. It's a story we hear far too often. Developers are regaling us with tales of how much piracy hurts their profits and pirates are laughing maniacally at how easy it is to hock illegal wares, living in some dark, damp cave where no light or goodness can be found -- well, save for the light from their pirated iPhone game, anyway. This is done through "jailbreaking," an increasingly common practice of unlocking one's phone through black magic and evil incantations that allow non-App Store programs and items to be installed. Basically, it's God Mode for your iPhone. So how can developers overcome this? Well, some are designing games that requires the phone contact a source to verify the version being played is legit -- an interesting concept that could help pave the way for better anti-piracy solutions. Either way you slice it, you have to be a real [negative adjective] to pirate a game that only costs you a few cents. [Via Pocket Gamer]
iPhone app claims 95% piracy rate
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/security/iPhone_app_claims_95_piracy_rate'; With all of the success stories coming out of the App Store, it's been pretty easy to forget the problem of piracy for most developers. Not so for Fishlabs, who've posted over on the Touch Arcade forums that their latest game, Rally Master Pro 3D, is experiencing a 95% piracy rate. You read that right: supposedly 95% of the people playing the game on the iPhone haven't paid for it. There's probably a multitude of reasons why that is -- the app is $7 with no trial version, it's not a super-popular app quite yet (so one pirated copy on a popular message board is probably traveling farther than the copies coming off of the official App Store), and there are probably at least a few other factors in the mix that we don't know yet. Still, 95% is obviously pretty darn high for a platform that's supposed to only deliver software through Apple's official store. Now, fortunately Fishlabs doesn't sound litigious -- they're not pulling the old "piracy = lost sales" fallacy that many companies in this situation would do. They are lowering the price on the app -- they expected it to be worth more, but apparently their consumer base seems to disagree. They tell Mobile Entertainment that they'd entertain the idea of providing content only through Apple's in-app purchasing service (presumably, that would prevent piracy by locking down the extra content), but they also say that's a gamble they've tried and missed on other platforms before. Of course, it'll take more than one post on one message board to make hay out of the problem of app piracy -- it definitely happens, but on the other hand, there certainly are apps selling well, and there are also apps not selling well that don't have this level of piracy going on. Apple already has lots of authentication and validation processes in place, but if app piracy is this big a problem for everyone, they may need to look at more.
Another developer reports insane iPhone piracy rates
Only a day after iPhone developer Smells Like Donkey complained of an 80 percent piracy rate of its game Tap Fu, another developer has made an even more alarming claim. According to Fishlabs, its latest release, Rally Master Pro 3D, achieved an astonishing 95 percent piracy rate in its first day of release. Fishlabs' Michael Schade told Mobile Entertainment News that the 95 percent piracy rate corresponds to "many thousands." When discussing whether the recently implemented in-app purchasing feature would help curb piracy, Schade was skeptical, saying, "I doubt that." He added, "We will see in the future how well in-app purchases fight piracy."
