Friggin Pirates - piss me off (google licensing didn't help at all!)

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

So, I went through pointless exercise of putting google license protection into my latest game, Mount Olympus, but apparently it didn’t help at all. 

I noticed yesterday that my downloads were taking off, doubling my highest day so far.  I’m seeing these from the corona dashboard analytics.  I thought it was due to a good review we got on Touch Arcade.  But today the numbers from the app stores don’t support it at all.  80% of all my downloads yesterday were illegal downloads.  I noticed in the analytics that tons of downloads happening in China, but yet on all the app stores, I have almost zero china downloads.  I did a search and found our APK being offered on several file sharing sites. 

Why the HELL do we even try???

I guess the good news is, it took the thieves 4-5 days to pirate Mount Olympus, when it only took them 24 hrs to pirate my last game, Tesla’s Electric Mist.  So, if you think protecting your game for an extra three days is worth the effort of adding the google licensing, then go for it.  Douche bags!!!

#2

And the file sharing sites, say they don’t allow illegal material.  But yet, just try to jump through all the bull crap red tape they require before they’ll even acknowledge your complaint.  It’s insane.  They basically require everything short of a DNA sample to verify who you are before they even start to look into your complaint.  And I don’t know about you, but I’m not extremely anxious to hand out all my private info to a site that’s knowingly enabling pirating.

#3

I’m starting on this “indie game development” and I see that your game Tesla’s Electric Mist already have over 100.000 downloads on five days… that’s amazing!

For the other part, you should implement a “license server” only for your pay apps to “validate” the installation. Maybe with xml you can do this, but this is only an idea.

Congrats for those downloads :wink:

#4

@info452 - We did a FREE promo on Tesla this last week, and actually got about 300,000 downloads.  In the 1.5 years it’s been out, we’re at just over a million downloads, mostly the free variety unfortunately.  But still cool. 

Implementing the Google licensing is supposed to do this for you.  It checks for a paid license and if it’s not there, it’s supposed to exit the game.  I don’t know how implementing my own system to do this same thing could work any better.  Not to mention I wouldn’t know where to begin, plus I’d hate to cause real paying customers problems. 

Here’s the code I used:

local function licensingListener( event )    local verified = event.isVerified    if not event.isVerified then       --failed verify app from the play store, we print a message       print( "Pirates: Walk the Plank!!!" )       native.requestExit()  --assuming this is how we handle pirates    end end if Globals.androidAppStore == "google" then     -- we only do the google licensing stuff if on google store.     local licensing = require( "licensing" )     licensing.init( "google" )     licensing.verify( licensingListener ) end
#5

I think the main thing to remember here, is the fact that the vast majority of people pirating apps and games wouldn’t pay for them anyway. I think that piracy has broken the free/pay model to the point where free-to-play or ad-support is the only way an indie dev can reliably make any scratch. I wish my game was popular enough to be pirated the way that yours is! I’m kinda jealous, for sure.

I don’t think that you should be discouraged by the amount of piracy that apparently is taking place. The people that would have bought your app in the first place are actually paying for it, and the ones that never would have paid for it in the first place, and just downloaded it because it was another new game that they could cram onto their phones.

#6

@Panc Software - So, at a level it bugs me that someone is stealing from me, especially when the thing took me over a year of full time effort to create plus it’s less than two bucks. 

But, you have to realize it’s more than just stealing. I get that the people doing this probably wouldn’t have paid anyways.  But it’s more than that. 

Here are some additional costs to a dev who has a game pirated:

  • additional load on any back end servers.  Not a big deal for me, but for some it is, i’m using analytics, but it’s unlimited and free, but other back-end services aren’t.

  • badly skewed analytic data.  This is really bugging me, because I can no longer look at daily analytics for any detail about what’s going on with my game.  It completely blinds me to my true numbers on things.  One day my analytics show x number of downloads, then the next day I find that only 90% of them are real, then the next day, I find that only 20% are real, and etc. 

  • errors reported via analytics may be ghosts.  I’m running into an issue where errors started getting reported through my analytics, around the time that I noticed the pirated versions.  So, now I’m trying to track them down, but they may not even be in my builds, they may be things that were introduced when the pirates broke out the license stuff.  I don’t know now, and I have to spin cycles of my time possibly hunting down errors that may or may not exist.

  • support emails.  I have a support button right on the main menu of my games, and believe it or not, people who get your app illegally, have no qualms about sending you an email for support if they run into a problem.  This is the one issue that really pisses me off, because I spend a lot of time answering support questions as fast as possible to make my users happy, and when my downloads go up because of pirates, my support emails go up right along with it.  So, I know I’m spending my valuable time answering questions for people who have stolen from me, but I have no way of separating out who is who.

  • Loss of future use of that user during a real FREE promotion.  I know they may not pay for the game, but still they are a potential user during my free promos.  A big part of my marketing plan is to run free promotions on my older games when my newer game come out.  If a pirate steals it prior to this, they definitely won’t download it later for free and help out my promotion.  These free promos, drive up the ranking of the app, plus tend to drive the ranking of your other similar apps too, plus if you have social stuff in your app, it has a chance to connect with others, etc.  Bottom line, you lose that opportunity with those users. 

So, you can see there are several issues other than just the loss of a sale that probably wouldn’t have happened anyways.

#7

Also, another thing to note.  It’s not just popular apps being pirated.  They pirate practically anything that hits the store these days.  Do a google search on your app.  in the search add “apk” or the bundle id of your android version and you’ll probably be suprised that your apps are pirated too.

  • Tesla was out less than 24 hrs, didn’t have any reviews at all, and was already pirated last year.

  • I had a game called Zeus ball that was pirated a couple years back.  The total paid downloads at the time were less than 200 over a period of 3 months.  But I found it had been pirated, and was on at least 5 pirate sites, and one of those sites showed that it had been downloaded from that one site over 100,000 times.  So, a game I made $140 on total, had been downloaded illegally of 100k times… insane.

#8

I feel for you, 

@panc - Yes - the only positive way to look at this is the potential fact that they probably would not have bought it anyway, BUT that is of little comfort. You say that the free/pay model is broke & free to play ad support is the way to go - that may be the case but might i suggest that the guys who won’t pay for it in the free/pay model probably use ad blockers in the ad support model or airplane mode.

We all see the reviews about “too many ads… etc…” so it’s not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that a pirate wouldn’t use other methods available to them to avoid incurring the fraction of 1 cent it would cost them via data plan.

@tielore - So you can see that it is occurring in china. I myself noticed something strange about one of my apps related to china - but it is currently only on iOS. Is your experience only related to Google/Android?

I am currently looking at doing the android thing and using google licensing similar code to yours in my main.lua file - this where you put yours?

My plan for the future is one of a exclude China ( & potentially some others) as one of my markets - yes i may later include it back in - (it’s an easy procedure). Sort of a stagger release strategy. Far from perfect BUT…

support emails - can go even further - Pirates are a ME, ME, ME, (i.e. not thinking of others type personality) so you don’t respond in a timely manner and to the degree that the “King/Queen” feels that they are due - you might get a negative review - which might put off other potential “quality” people - i have yet to see a review with the tag line - " just glad i didn’t pay for this"

T.

#9

@ToeKnee - I mentioned China because my analytics on my corona dashboard show that 30% of my New Users are in China, but I’ve only sold 3 copies accross all app stores to China.  So you tell me.  But, I haven’t specifically looked if the China users are Android or iOS.  Honestly I just assumed they’re android because I’ve found my android APK all over the net on pirate sites.  I haven’t found any evidence of an iOS version on the pirate sites, yet. 

#10

Hi, I just checked some more and it looks like i have had at least 2 apps (thus far) that have been jailbroken (iOS) - and on best guess i attribute this to China for one and India for the other -  hell the second one i just found out today. 

I’m taking all my apps out of India and china today - obviously i am a small fish - hell call me a plankton - but it’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s wishful thinking but just think if loads of developers suddenly deserted these app stores in the suspect countries - yes it would leave those markets open with sparse choices - but hey if the reality is that you being in that market got you only 3 sales ( me only 1 ( india[1], china[1])) then hey leave it to the likes of CCSaga.

This is a tough business with Pirates on one hand and cloners on the other. I think that starters out need to realise this and the first decision they need to make is this - 1) would i like to make a living at this OR 2) is this a hobby.

I am not trying to discourage anyone - please this can be a very satisfying thing to do - for me i love the creativeness it provides.

IMHO too many answer 2 then because it’s a hobby go the “clone” route - but once they successfully produce a “clone” - they think to themselves hey i made a GAME - and then hey perhaps i can make some cash - and release it.

T.

#11

So, back on the topic of filthy pirates. 

My old game Tesla’s Electric Mist had been free for a week, and a couple days ago, I put it back to $.99.  So, then yesterday I’m watching my analytics, and notice Tesla’s still getting tons of downloads.  It was a bit exciting how many paid downloads it was getting.  Several thousand dollars worth.  It’s was free for about a week, and it’s currently #30 on What’s Hot for Games/Puzzle and Adventure in the U.S.  So, I thought those two things combined were what was driving the sales so well. 

I woke up this morning to a very disappointing $14 worth of real sales.  So, thousands to fourteen.  Very Very Very disappointing. 

So, you can chalk up one more cost to pirating - emotional roller coaster.

#12

I doubt it’s much consolation, but I was one of the 200 who paid for Zeus Ball and my son still fires it up every now and then. Cheers

#13

@Cambridge Lane Studios - Well good to know someone enjoyed that one.  I made that prior to finding Corona SDK. 

#14

And the file sharing sites, say they don’t allow illegal material.  But yet, just try to jump through all the bull crap red tape they require before they’ll even acknowledge your complaint.  It’s insane.  They basically require everything short of a DNA sample to verify who you are before they even start to look into your complaint.  And I don’t know about you, but I’m not extremely anxious to hand out all my private info to a site that’s knowingly enabling pirating.

#15

I’m starting on this “indie game development” and I see that your game Tesla’s Electric Mist already have over 100.000 downloads on five days… that’s amazing!

For the other part, you should implement a “license server” only for your pay apps to “validate” the installation. Maybe with xml you can do this, but this is only an idea.

Congrats for those downloads :wink:

#16

@info452 - We did a FREE promo on Tesla this last week, and actually got about 300,000 downloads.  In the 1.5 years it’s been out, we’re at just over a million downloads, mostly the free variety unfortunately.  But still cool. 

Implementing the Google licensing is supposed to do this for you.  It checks for a paid license and if it’s not there, it’s supposed to exit the game.  I don’t know how implementing my own system to do this same thing could work any better.  Not to mention I wouldn’t know where to begin, plus I’d hate to cause real paying customers problems. 

Here’s the code I used:

local function licensingListener( event )    local verified = event.isVerified    if not event.isVerified then       --failed verify app from the play store, we print a message       print( "Pirates: Walk the Plank!!!" )       native.requestExit()  --assuming this is how we handle pirates    end end if Globals.androidAppStore == "google" then     -- we only do the google licensing stuff if on google store.     local licensing = require( "licensing" )     licensing.init( "google" )     licensing.verify( licensingListener ) end
#17

I think the main thing to remember here, is the fact that the vast majority of people pirating apps and games wouldn’t pay for them anyway. I think that piracy has broken the free/pay model to the point where free-to-play or ad-support is the only way an indie dev can reliably make any scratch. I wish my game was popular enough to be pirated the way that yours is! I’m kinda jealous, for sure.

I don’t think that you should be discouraged by the amount of piracy that apparently is taking place. The people that would have bought your app in the first place are actually paying for it, and the ones that never would have paid for it in the first place, and just downloaded it because it was another new game that they could cram onto their phones.

#18

@Panc Software - So, at a level it bugs me that someone is stealing from me, especially when the thing took me over a year of full time effort to create plus it’s less than two bucks. 

But, you have to realize it’s more than just stealing. I get that the people doing this probably wouldn’t have paid anyways.  But it’s more than that. 

Here are some additional costs to a dev who has a game pirated:

  • additional load on any back end servers.  Not a big deal for me, but for some it is, i’m using analytics, but it’s unlimited and free, but other back-end services aren’t.

  • badly skewed analytic data.  This is really bugging me, because I can no longer look at daily analytics for any detail about what’s going on with my game.  It completely blinds me to my true numbers on things.  One day my analytics show x number of downloads, then the next day I find that only 90% of them are real, then the next day, I find that only 20% are real, and etc. 

  • errors reported via analytics may be ghosts.  I’m running into an issue where errors started getting reported through my analytics, around the time that I noticed the pirated versions.  So, now I’m trying to track them down, but they may not even be in my builds, they may be things that were introduced when the pirates broke out the license stuff.  I don’t know now, and I have to spin cycles of my time possibly hunting down errors that may or may not exist.

  • support emails.  I have a support button right on the main menu of my games, and believe it or not, people who get your app illegally, have no qualms about sending you an email for support if they run into a problem.  This is the one issue that really pisses me off, because I spend a lot of time answering support questions as fast as possible to make my users happy, and when my downloads go up because of pirates, my support emails go up right along with it.  So, I know I’m spending my valuable time answering questions for people who have stolen from me, but I have no way of separating out who is who.

  • Loss of future use of that user during a real FREE promotion.  I know they may not pay for the game, but still they are a potential user during my free promos.  A big part of my marketing plan is to run free promotions on my older games when my newer game come out.  If a pirate steals it prior to this, they definitely won’t download it later for free and help out my promotion.  These free promos, drive up the ranking of the app, plus tend to drive the ranking of your other similar apps too, plus if you have social stuff in your app, it has a chance to connect with others, etc.  Bottom line, you lose that opportunity with those users. 

So, you can see there are several issues other than just the loss of a sale that probably wouldn’t have happened anyways.

#19

Also, another thing to note.  It’s not just popular apps being pirated.  They pirate practically anything that hits the store these days.  Do a google search on your app.  in the search add “apk” or the bundle id of your android version and you’ll probably be suprised that your apps are pirated too.

  • Tesla was out less than 24 hrs, didn’t have any reviews at all, and was already pirated last year.

  • I had a game called Zeus ball that was pirated a couple years back.  The total paid downloads at the time were less than 200 over a period of 3 months.  But I found it had been pirated, and was on at least 5 pirate sites, and one of those sites showed that it had been downloaded from that one site over 100,000 times.  So, a game I made $140 on total, had been downloaded illegally of 100k times… insane.

#20

I feel for you, 

@panc - Yes - the only positive way to look at this is the potential fact that they probably would not have bought it anyway, BUT that is of little comfort. You say that the free/pay model is broke & free to play ad support is the way to go - that may be the case but might i suggest that the guys who won’t pay for it in the free/pay model probably use ad blockers in the ad support model or airplane mode.

We all see the reviews about “too many ads… etc…” so it’s not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that a pirate wouldn’t use other methods available to them to avoid incurring the fraction of 1 cent it would cost them via data plan.

@tielore - So you can see that it is occurring in china. I myself noticed something strange about one of my apps related to china - but it is currently only on iOS. Is your experience only related to Google/Android?

I am currently looking at doing the android thing and using google licensing similar code to yours in my main.lua file - this where you put yours?

My plan for the future is one of a exclude China ( & potentially some others) as one of my markets - yes i may later include it back in - (it’s an easy procedure). Sort of a stagger release strategy. Far from perfect BUT…

support emails - can go even further - Pirates are a ME, ME, ME, (i.e. not thinking of others type personality) so you don’t respond in a timely manner and to the degree that the “King/Queen” feels that they are due - you might get a negative review - which might put off other potential “quality” people - i have yet to see a review with the tag line - " just glad i didn’t pay for this"

T.