Originally Posted by ramsey_isler
Hello! Writer and app developer/publisher here 
There are two points to make here:
1.) The gaming community is calling "BS" on this one, considering that pirating a game is more effort than a dollar's worth of time. It's also possible that Madfinger could be mistaking Titanium backup restores and ROM flashes as pirated copies. Or this could simply be a marketing ploy, or a way to cover up bad sales numbers.
2.) I wouldn't say free-to-play is the future. It's the present. This has been the case for some time now. I've consulted on a number of apps for the past few years, and the free apps always get more play. That doesn't mean that free = no revenue though. Far from it, actually. A well-made freemium game can bring in big bucks. Zynga and all the companies that they gobbled up understand the formula - get people hooked then hit 'em with the upsell (or shove ads in their faces as often as you can). This has been the proven model in the app store for the last two years. Just looking at the current stats for the game on Google Play, they've seen a huge jump in downloads since going free (like orders of magnitude higher). That's a lot of potential money from in-app-purchases and/or ad revenue. I would not be surprised if they make more money as a free game than they did as a paid game, so what's the fuss really? |