See some screenshots of the game below:

You can check it out in iTunes here or visit our Silver Skull site here

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WTF man. Nobody does this. Ever. And the damn point of Installous is to let you try before you buy. And you just f—– up the whole system. So f— you dude, I would have bought it after trying it out, IF it was any good. I think it probably sucks so you don’t want people to test it out first…Nice job man. Way to suck at life. And I hope that nobody will buy from you just because of this.

I was in customer service mode when I saw this post so I quickly fired off one of the most unnecessarily nice e-mails of my life:

Hey dude,
Thanks for the post.  I disagree with you that most people use Installous to try before they buy.  So you know, I spent the last 3 months on this project and currently over 60% [of users] are not paying.

I get your point…and what I was trying to do here was convert the type of people you are not talking about (those that pirate everything with no intent to buy) as opposed to letting it just go unchecked.

I would like you to try the game though…would you download it if I sent you a promo code?  Let me know.
Thanks.

Now me sending this e-mail was crazy I know but from my point of view iCombat had just launched and I didn’t want to have anyone be negative on my app.  What followed my e-mail was surprising, the pirate responded in a very conciliatory tone, apologizing and so I sent him the promo code.  His response several days later was enthusiastic, saying “I love the app dude, it’s awesome.”  And this is where the craziness begins, he then proceeded to make a YouTube clip of the game and he even offered to host a contest and do a more serious quality demo. I even found a comment of his on YouTube where he actually attacked a pirate who linked through to a piracy site.  This pirate had gone from cursing me out to cursing out other pirates, defending my interests and helping get the word out about Combat.

Now maybe this pirate was emotionally unstable or just a kid, but either way I learned quite a bit from the experience.  Key lessons below:

1. There are a lot of fanatical people on the web

• If you have dealt with customers on the web you can attest to this fact. There are a decent amount of people that seem to have nothing better to do than criticize or evangelize your product.  Needless to say this can be both good and bad.

2. On the web, everyone is your customer

• Since anyone, even people who aren’t paying customers (or even customers for that matter) can share their opinion about your product, you have to treat everyone as if they are a customer.  It’s kind of like when you walk in to a nice hotel and get treated like a guest even when you aren’t one.  Not only can these hotels not afford to be wrong, but they benefit anytime someone experiences their brand.

3. You never know which of your users (legal or illegal) has the largest digital footprint

• On the web, having influence is largely a result of putting in the time. As a result having influence usually results from a user being passionate and being willing to put in the time (Scoble or Kawasaki sending out Twitter updates on a Saturday night comes to mind) but this energy can also stem from a user being just being crazy or immature
• So while tapping users as evangelists of your product is extremely effective, the flip side is that you have to go extra far to keep your users happy so they don’t go rogue and try to sink your brand across the web

4. On the web, user opinion is the ONLY thing

• Unlike a brick and mortar business for example, web businesses have no geographic advantages like default foot traffic (unless you have a web domain that is self explanatory like pets.com or is a typo of Google)
• The digital herd is influenced primarily by word of mouth and the experience you leave customers with so loyalty is everything

I know in my example above my e-mail was a bit like asking someone robbing my store if they were finding everything they needed.  On the surface it sounds ridiculous but if you are just getting started you need everyone to speak highly of your product.  Was giving him a promo code crazy?  This pirate took the time to comment on my website (literally 1 out of every 300 that visited did) so he was clearly the type of internet user who is willing to spend the time posting to sites.  Developers give promo codes to fans and bloggers for reviews so is letting an active pirate spread awareness any different? Anyone who loves your app will talk about it to friends, be seen using the app in public and potentially be an influencer online.

The key take away is that every user counts, so even if you don’t genuinely care about your users (hopefully you do) the next time you get a question or e-mail from a tedious customer just remember that the power lies with you whether that person chooses to help or hurt your brand.

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As a first time developer I wanted to protect my effort but did not want to pay an upfront fee to Ripdev without having made a dime so I opted to go for the more benign yet not totally passive option.  I chose to detect when they cracked the application and then have a pop-up screen say something inoffensive along with a button routing them away from game play after 5 levels.  The button redirected the pirate to a hidden page I created on my site called “You Jacked My App” where the text read:

“Hi if you have been directed to this page it’s because we see that you have a pirated copy.  While we are glad you are interested please understand that we want to continue making it better, but to do that we need people to each pay for their copy.  If you want to continue using please purchase today.”

The idea was to get the user to empathize with my cause and maybe convert a tiny fraction of those users into sales.  While it was a cheesy move and probably a bad idea I figured it couldn’t hurt to try (maybe I should have just rickroll’d them all!).  For a great example of a better executed version of this strategy see developer Ben Chatelain’s pop-up here which mentions needing the sales to help feed his 1 year old!  I just found this but had I seen it pre-iCombat 1.0 I would probably have implemented something similarly guilt evoking.

See below some stats to give you an idea of the scope of the problem for iCombat as well as some conclusions I have drawn from the experience:

A few thoughts on the data:

1) Pirates are extremely early adopters:

• iCombat was cracked and posted to Twitter before even propagating through all of Apple’s servers (I’d say within 30 minutes from going live).  Their adoption on the front end was much quicker than the paying user.  Nothing beats free…

2) There is no feedback culture among app pirates

• I am not sure whether they rely on legit app reviews or just word of mouth, but surprising that no one anywhere posted a warning that iCombat was blocked after just 5 levels (of 20).  As far as I know the cracking apps only utilize the plist hack so it is not an issue of hackers having found a workaround to my pop-up (I could be wrong here)

3) The overall pirate community is smaller than I had expected, but much more active

• 5 to 1 ratio off the bat in terms of pirated copies to purchased
• leveled off at about 1 to 1 ratio over the last few weeks before I removed the block (since then it has gone back up but on much smaller volume)
• iCombat has had dozens of Tweets about cracked versions of the game
• Cracking is a source of pride for pirates, and this pushes them to disseminate more aggressively

4) There was a high clickthrough rate to my site (only way user could avoid would have been to press home button) but once there ZERO users clicked through to purchase a copy.  Maybe if I had mentioned a 1 year old baby this would have been higher.

Some considerations specific to iCombat:

• iCombat was priced at $0.99 throughout this period
• Initial coverage in Gizmodo at launch plus the fact that iCombat is a familiar theme (tank game reminiscent of Combat for Atari or Wii Tanks game) might have also pushed an abnormal amount of geeks/ pirates to download it

Conclusions:

1) Piracy is still not that big of a problem when talking about the apps with larger download volumes

• Dave Castelnuovo from Pocket God was generous enough to share with me that they are only seeing a 5%-10% piracy rate for example.  While this could be in part because of Pocket God’s rapid update cycle which renders each pirated version outdated after just a week or two, it might also be a sign that the cracking community still isn’t that large on a relative scale.  This argument is supported by my declining per cent of pirates relative to overall downloads.

2) Blocking pirates is not worth it unless you can push conversion by giving them a lite style version

• Strategically structure the cracked game so pirates get the upsell, in iCombat’s case I would do (planning on a lite version soon) limited weapons, limited levels, no global high scores (coming in 1.2), etc.  Again for a good example of this see the link to Ben Chatelain’s 10 day demo strategy (above).
• A full block risks damaging the brand for non-pirates (could be perceived as a bug) or of creating a backlash by disgruntled pirates.  Not worth the risk.

3) Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face

• The goal behind launching an app isn’t thwarting pirates, it is getting users and generating sales so leave the “making a point” anti-piracy measures to the big guys. The competition is so fierce to get noticed in the App store that any attention is good attention.  Ethan Nicholas from iShoot fame probably isn’t too worried about the small pirate minority seeing as how he sold a couple hundred thousand copies of iShoot at $2.99.
• In most cases there is not a direct cannibalization of your sales by people using cracked copies – unless you have a high priced niche app the cost is negligible and the market is not zero sum (see my upcoming posts on my conversations with pirates that backs this up)
• There is a ton of anger and energy spent thinking about pirates (see the iPhoneDevSDK forum here for examples), this energy should be put into creating better apps and focusing on the top line potential.  In my case there are design issues that I should have focused on rather than trying to spoil the pirate’s experience.

So What Do We Do?

Assuming you have a relatively cheap app with a wide potential audience and what you perceive to be a long term value proposition, I think the best solution is to create a version akin to a lite version of the app for pirates.  It is no good to shut off access to the app completely, but it also doesn’t get you very far to give away the core value you are offering to the paying user.  I have decided I am going to do this for the next update of my app and hope that happy users, be they paying or pirates, will help spread the word and get iCombat above the App store noise.

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iPhoneSavior wrote a post recently about how Imaginuity New Media’s new game Rocky Artue had been cracked and was being downloaded online hundreds of times for free.  Perhaps most interesting was the fact that they discovered that the game had been cracked through the use of Pinch Media’s user analytic tools.  While Pinch Media markets their mobile analytics solutions more for usage behavior (as seen in their AppStore Secrets presentation so widelyin the press over the last week) their ability to audit App store data by comparing actual downloads to App store downloads may become increasingly relevant to developers.

Quoting an e-mail to Imaginuity founder Allen Restrepo from Pinch Media’s Jesse Rowland (from the iPhoneSavior post):

“Unfortunately I have bad news for you that you might not want to hear. We typically see these large discrepancies between our numbers and Apple’s for paid applications that have been pirated.  I did a quick search for cracked versions of your application in the wild, and like most, it’s definitely available for people to steal. Your case is actually one of the largest cases of piracy we’ve seen where typically we see paid applications receiving around 5x more users from piracy then from legitimate downloads.”

The question of just how bad is App store piracy is one that I haven’t really found many answers to yet.  Part of the problem I imagine is that no developer really wants to put out press releases announcing to the world that their application has been cracked.  And writing about the problem might only contribute to the issue (I cringe at the thought that I may be helping propagate Crackulous by even mentioning it) but what is the alternative? By putting the burden of cracking an application on only one person and making it easier for everyone else to follow, Crackulous could be the application that makes App store piracy grow exponentially (especially amongst the high school and college kids that are the most active application users).

While the good news is that we can quantify whether the problem is ocurring at all on our own applications by using analytics tools already out there, the question though is what about blocking piracy altogether?  While developers have to primarily look to Apple for protection, there do seem to be a few solutions developers can choose from.  TUAW wrote about Ripdev’s launching an anti-piracy service several weeks ago here and while it seems to be an effective solution, it certainly isn’t cheap.  It requires an upfront fee and a percentage of revenue generated (varying depending on volume of sales), for pricing see here (PDF).  While this seems like a very high price to pay, it could be well worth it if Jesse Rowland’s statement that “paid applications [are] receiving around 5x more users from piracy then from legitimate downloads” is correct.

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