Piracy rates are higher on iOS than on Android, developer says

In what seems to be an unintentional response to our previous report surrounding the supposed rampant piracy on Android, another developer believes that the reverse is true. Chris Pruett, a developer for the popular game Wind-up Knight and founder of Robot Invader, said that the company’s piracy rate on the said game was about 12% on Android and about 15% on iOS. Pruett added that back when Wind-up Knight for iOS was a paid app, the piracy rate reportedly went 80%.

The developer also mentioned that roughly 100% of their pirate users on Android and iOS are in China. “I think piracy is, as always, a red herring. You can’t stop it, but as long as it’s slightly arduous, it’s not a lot of lost sales. Because a huge number of people who pirate software would never buy it in a million years,” Pruett explained. “You aren’t losing a sale to them. Piracy starts to matter only when pirate users can cost you money in other ways, e.g. network bandwidth and server cost. Yet another reason to be a free app in today’s mobile marketplace.”

Gene Ryan Briones
Categories: Cellphones, Tablets
Tags: Android, iOS, research