Android is designed for piracy, developer says

Scottish developer Matt Gemmell is saying that Android’s open source philosophy is designed for piracy from the ground up. If you’re taken aback by Gemmell’s statement, he has a lengthy post on his blog to explain his presumption. Gemmell says that Google’s Android platform and Play Store are built in such as way that makes the sideloading of apps almost as easy as legitimately purchasing them. “People pirate Android apps because it’s easy. It’s easy because the system was built with an open mentality,” he said.

Last week, Madfinger Games announced that its popular game Dead Trigger for Android  is now free to download via Google Play. Madfinger Games pointed out that the unbelievably high piracy rate on Android somewhat prompted them to make the game free. “You search the internet for pirate copies of apps, then copy them onto your (regular, unrooted, non-jailbroken) device, and launch them,” Gemmell writes. “The system is designed for piracy from the ground up. The existence of piracy isn’t a surprise, but rather an inevitability.” I’d like to point out that Gemmell is actually a Mac OS X and iOS developer, so I recommend that you take his report with a grain of salt in hand.

Gene Ryan Briones
Categories: General
Tags: Android, Google, Piracy