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Independent developer Smells Like Donkey has revealed piracy rates for its recently released iPhone brawler Tap-Fu. In its first week of release, more than 90% of Tap-Fu users were playing a pirated version of the game.
Smells Like Donkey and publishing partner Neptune Interactive note that since Tap-Fu’s release on October 16th, the title rose from a 50% initial piracy rate to a peak of more than 90%. As of October 22nd, over 80% of Tap-Fu players are still playing a pirated copy.
The developer also counters arguments that piracy serves a “try before you buy” function for many users. In Tap-Fu’s first week of release, Smells Like Donkey observed that “not a single pirate bought Tap-Fu after playing it.”
Smells Like Donkey collected its data through Tap-Fu’s online leaderboards, which require users to manually submit high scores. When sending a score, players also reveal whether their copy of the game has been pirated.
Tap-Fu’s piracy rates mirror statements made by ngmoco VP Alan Yu at GDC China earlier this month. In his keynote, Yu claimed that ngmoco-published games typically suffer from a 50%-90% rate in their first week of release.
Smells Like Donkey attributes the platform’s high piracy rates to the ease in which iPhone users can “jailbreak” their devices and run unofficial code. The developer claims that pirating an iPhone game is “MUCH easier than actually buying it on iTunes.” Tap-Fu was pirated and made available as a cracked download less than 40 minutes after its initial App Store release.
This is sad, but it should also be encouragement for more iPhone developers to release free “lite” versions of their games. I wonder how the numbers would change if Tap-Fu had a lite version? Maybe people who pirate games don’t end up buying the software, but maybe they would have never gone to the trouble of seeking out a pirated version in the first place if a lite version had been available to try.
More importantly though, I don’t like seeing developers blame jailbreaking for software piracy. Software piracy on a Mac or PC doesn’t require any jailbreaking, and it’s a problem that software developers have to deal with. Blaming jailbreaking for piracy is like blaming the crowbar that was used to break into someone’s house. There are plenty of legitimate, legal reasons to jailbreak your iPhone, please don’t encourage a crackdown on jailbreaking because it *could* be used for piracy. My web browser *could* be used for fraud, identity theft, piracy, and a whole host of other illegal acts, but no one is blaming the web browser.
[...] FingerGaming » Tap-Fu Developer Details 90% iPhone Piracy Rate – Gaming on the iPhone and iPo… Tap-Fuの利用者の90%が海賊版を利用している。とのこと。ngmoco のゲームも同じくらい海賊版を使われていた。 [...]
A paid game app should check to see if the phone is jailbroken, and if so, dont play.
iPhone games *are* lite.
jailbreaking is not the same as pirating
besides, more than 90% of iphone users don´t pirate games, how about devs to think ways to actually SELL?
[...] a busy week in App Store releases, and a few have slipped by while I was looking into things like TapFu’s 90% piracy rate and the controversial decision to pull Luxor rival StoneLoops! from the App Store. Here’s a [...]
[...] Tap-Fu might be worth a download, if only so you can proudly say that you weren’t among the 90% of jerks who pirated [...]
So, essentially users are downloading the code, then re-uploading it to a torrent site or other distribution point, and people are downloading it because jailbroken iPhones don’t require any app verification? Hmm..I had no idea this was going on..How unfortunate for iPhone app developers!!