Compatibility of smartphones 'a real nightmare', says Appy exec
Android Piracy rates for Appy Entertainment’s Facefighter game were 2,330 per cent higher than on its iOS counterpart, according to studio exec Steven Sargent.
"The piracy rate on Android was 70 to 1 compared to 3 to 1 on iOS," Sargent told Pocketgamer. "That's crippling."
The Appy exec said the developer also had problems with the compatibility of smartphones, with the first customer complaint coming within hours of FaceFighter’s release.
"There are too many devices for a company of our size to deal with the compatibility on Android," said Sargent. "Compatibility was a real nightmare."
He added the studio had to “brute force textures to 25 per cent just to get the game to run” and that the audio was so buggy “we couldn’t work out how to fix it, so we didn’t.”
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Despite the high piracy rate, Appy recently announced it had reached 10 million downloads across all its games.
That's what happens if it's easier to pirate apps than to buy them.
I love how he says "we couldn't figure out how to fix the audio, so we didn't", but they went ahead and released anyway. So you expect people to pay you for something you KNOW doesn't work correctly?
Hah... what a laugh. He sounds like Ubisoft or Creative Assembly.
"Sir! Sales are dropping!"
"Don't worry about it, we're working on Silent Hunter X already. Who cares if Silent Hunter V wasn't even past beta state and we sold it to people anyways. We've got their money."
"Sir! They're pirating the crap out of the games! Do you think it's because all our games aren't even out of their Beta stage or properly tested?"
"Who cares? DRM the hell out of it!"
"Sir! The DRM's not working and even more people are pirating the games now."
"Damn those pirates! It's all the pirates fault!"
