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Gentleman! for Android has a 99.71% piracy rate

$

$h@d0w

Junior Member
Lucky Frame said:
Three weeks ago my little studio, Lucky Frame, released Gentlemen! for iPad and Android. If you aren’t aware of it, it's a 2-player head-to-head Victorian dueling game for tablets. Two players required, local multiplayer only.
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Lucky Frame said:
Without a doubt, Gentlemen! was one of the best-reviewed projects we have ever produced. We received a coveted 8/10 on Edge, 4.5 stars on Touch Arcade, and a 9/10 Gold Award on PocketGamer. This was totally brilliant, and we are so proud. It’s interesting to think about why we got such great reviews. Obviously it’s a game that we’re super proud of, and we think it’s amazing, but that’s not always enough to secure great critical acclaim.
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On the Android version:

Lucky Frame said:
after three weeks those numbers are now 144 copies sold, 50,030 copies pirated
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Article: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Yann...cessful_game_is_also_our_least_profitable.php

Here's the game on the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.luckyframe.gentlemen

iWvZOZOT6cK26.png
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Must feel disheartening. Seems like the most profit is to be made with games featuring micro transactions or ad based free games. Makes sense that developers are looking into portable platforms with no piracy as of yet (Vita, 3DS).

Of course comparing the install base of those machines to iOS or even Android is laughable but then again we have seen a lot of movement there and apparently successes too. Shows exactly how critical it is for Nintendo and Sony to keep their platforms piracy free.
 
Ein Bear said:
Jesus fucking Christ. I don't really follow Android very much, is it usually this bad?
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I wouldn't expect it's so bad for every title, and I'm sure there are factors not taken into account, but I see articles very similar to this more often than I think is reasonable.
 
Add the proper security measures.
 
It's not quite as bad as it seems at first though(see below quote) and hopefully as word of mouth spreads the sales will pick up. A slightly more expensive, local only multiplayer game seems like a tough sell to me though...

About 95% of the pirated copies are being installed in Russia and China (and of those, mostly China). We didn’t even translate our Google Play store into Russian or Chinese, so it’s almost certain that the pirates just found our app on localized pirate sites.
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In comparison, they sold 1,114 copies on ipad. Not a great success either way.

Seems like a nice bunch of dudes with a good idea and solid execution. But not everyone can win the mobile lottery.

Grimløck;78063185 said:
wat?
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Chao said:
Dat racism
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It's in the article:

One thing that helped me reach that conclusion was the location statistics for the pirated copies. About 95% of the pirated copies are being installed in Russia and China (and of those, mostly China). We didn’t even translate our Google Play store into Russian or Chinese, so it’s almost certain that the pirates just found our app on localized pirate sites. On the other hand, I’m glad our menu design is intuitive enough that you can play the game without speaking English!
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Hiccup said:
Ouch. That's ridiculous. Is it always this bad??
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There used to be 10 pirated copies for every PC game sold, so yes. There is no copy protection at all for most Android games, it's just download, install, have the full game. They even show up in the Play Store as games you have bought.
 
I feel bad for the developers, if that was me I would just concentrate on iOS only. If Android users aren't going to respect the developers then they don't deserve the product.

Edit:

ToxicAdam said:
It's just as bad on IOS according to some of the devs that post in the monthly thread. They said its mostly Chinese pirates, also.
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Whilst this is true, 144 (Android) compared to 1114 (iOS) is a joke. There's no incentive to develop for Android.
 
That was horrible.My sympathy for them.

Hope the game will be a hit when they decided to release it on Vita.

If they wanted to release it on 3DS,someone hopefully can remind them about Gateway flashcart.
 
Zarx said:
lol that is a lot of piracy. No wonder freemium and micro transactions dominates on mobile.
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At the end of the article they do say they should have put microtransactions into the game.

Lucky Frame said:
if we had anticipated this situation we probably would have included some sort of in app purchase, perhaps to unlock extra levels or game modes
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Mithos said:
From the article:


Fact indeed..
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I guess the piracy rate is the around the same on every country, it's just that there will be more pirates in a bigger country.

I have yet to see a paid app on an android platform here in Spain.
 
ToxicAdam said:
It's just as bad on IOS according to some of the devs that post in the monthly thread. They said its mostly Chinese pirates, also.
Click to expand...

Yup. Everywhere I went in Asia, there were stalls set up where you could load 100 games onto your ios/android device for $1-2, and all the locals were using them. Nobody buys software out there - it's all pirated.

The real story here is that Gentlemen! failed to get any traction on Android in the west, despite getting great reviews. I wonder why that is. Without looking at their situation in depth, I wouldn't be surprised if their marketing is awful. I think the main reason why a lot of iOS/Android apps fail to attract attention is that their marketing is godawful.
 
I don't know how useful that stat really is. The vast majority of those (Chinese) pirates wouldn't buy the game if they couldn't pirate it, they just wouldn't play it. They even say "it’s almost certain that the pirates just found our app on localized pirate sites" -- those are certainly not lost sales.
 
Never heard of this game.

And he's counting those "Android game bundle week of 8/17-8/24" torrent downloads as downloads of his game. Those people probably never even specifically wanted to DL his game. Oh well.
 
Fitrix said:
That was horrible.My sympathy for them.

Hope the game will be a hit when they decided to release it on Vita.

If they wanted to release it on 3DS,someone hopefully can remind them about Gateway flashcart.
Click to expand...

Did you even bother looking the game up? It's clearly designed for tablets and wouldn't work on either Vita or 3DS. Gateway flashcard on 3DS doesn't mean anything currently.
 
ToxicAdam said:
It's just as bad on IOS according to some of the devs that post in the monthly thread. They said its mostly Chinese pirates, also.
Click to expand...
At the same rate, that'd be 387.037 pirated copies on ipad.

Pretty impressive reach. I'd say that's groundwork to get the word out for their next game, but if 95% of the pirates are in China or Russia... probably not.

the main problem is that most of these pirates probably exist in a commercial ecosystem where the Google Play store does not even exist
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Can't convert people with in-app purchases if they're not part of the ecosystem.
 
ToxicAdam said:
It's just as bad on IOS according to some of the devs that post in the monthly thread. They said its mostly Chinese pirates, also.
Click to expand...

well maybe except ios does still make a lot more revenue I believe

so it can't be quite as bad, though im sure there are some exception
 
50 000 lost sales !!!


Game buy ratio :

Android: ~100
iOS ~ ~1000

Yep. Looks like Android and iOS market is just saturated so much that people don't simply give a shit about small indie games.
 
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