Madfinger Games, the developer of the app, have announced that their popular title is now free-to-play as a result of the “unbelievably high” piracy rates.
The mobile gaming market is one that is still growing and evolving as it does so. There are benefits to it as well as drawbacks; with virtually no limits to how much revenue one can make as well as plenty of innovation comes the lack of defined and secure infrastructure to guard against piracy and hacking.
Apple is still working to find a permanent solution to the hack which allows users to complete fake transactions on in-game content. A hacker in Russia had set up servers which fooled applications into thinking that the user was making real micro transactions for in-game content.
Apple has released a temporary fix and plans to eliminate the hack completely with the next update. However, one can rest assured that the hacking community will find another way to set up the fake transactions once again in this never ending game of cat and mouse between the hackers and Apple.
The problem is not limited to iOS and Apple though as Android is suffering from the same problems as well. However, in the Google powered operated system’s case there seems to be no fix on the way in the immediate future and developers have had to resort to either giving in to piracy or making their games free-to-play to remove any need for users to download pirated software.
One such developer that has gone the freemium route is Madfinger Games, the studio responsible for the popular first-person shooter zombie survival game, Dead Trigger.
A statement released by the studio explained how the move was a result of staggeringly high piracy figures despite the game being priced under the $1 benchmark. Madfinger Games also conceded that it had no experience with regards to the free-to-play business model but that it had no choice but to adopt it.
The statement read:
“(The) piracy rate on Android devices was unbelievably high. At first we intend to make this game available [to] as many people as possible – that’s why it (cost) as little as a buck much less than the $8 for SHADOWGUN.”
The developer has also confirmed that all in-game content is also free for the time being while it works out pricing points.
The issue of piracy is a serious one in the gaming world and a number of notable figures in the industry have all given their suggestions on how it can be curbed. However, there is no consensus at the moment and each platform developer and studio has its own means of dealing with the problem.
Dead Trigger is available for free on Google Play and will remain so in the near future.
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