By Damn you, pirates! Polarbit – the developers responsible for Reckless Racing for iOS and Android – recently had to pull their application from the Android market. It’s since gone back live. We’d wondered why it was even pulled in the first place – just as many of you did – and the answer is because so many pirated users were causing overloads on their download servers. Because of this, users who paid for the app in the market were unable to download the extra ~40 MB of data required to play the game.
Polarbit’s Tommy Forslund:
“In addition to the many legitimately sold copies of Reckless Racing that are accessing our data servers, there are also regrettably cracked versions of the game floating around since a day or two,” says Polarbit’s Tommy Forslund. “These get the game data from exactly the same servers as the legitimate versions, further adding to the difficulties experienced by those of you who have paid for your copy of the game.
They’ve not just removed it hoping for the pirates to go away, though. They’ve been using this time to work on adding new security measures and to add new servers, both of which went live yesterday (well ahead of their initial “Tuesday afternoon” expectations.) And to close out the round of announcements they had regarding this week’s circus, they had this to say to pirates:
I wouldn’t make this stuff up, folks, and I would have to agree with their sentiments, 100%.
[Polarbit via Droid Gamers]
Only one thing. It was in the market last night when I bought it.
Thanks! I didn’t think to check against their own prediction :-P
Yes, piracy is bad. But I have two thoughts to share here:
1. Back in the day I worked for one of the top 10 software companies worldwide. Their primary app sold for $3000. They estimated that they had at least 10 pirate copies in use for every legit copy sold. But back then, the company’s management were pretty enlightened and they realized that:
(a) pirate copies were a great advertisement for their product, because far more people were using it (and therefore likely to buy it) than they had been able to reach through legitimate channels; and
(b) they made it _really_ easy to do a no-questions-asked upgrade to the next version when it came out, thereby converting tens of thousands of pirate copies into legit copies every time they did a new release.
This same company is now controlled by the attorneys and bean counters, so I doubt they have the same attitude. But from in the field experience, I’d say both parts worked very very well for them. It’s the same result you are seeing in music where some artists are embracing piracy and using it as a way to connect with fans to drive future revenue.
2. Non-legit versions still access the same servers to download content? Really? With no checking? Someone was asleep at the switch here — that’s just bad design. Your average pirate won’t think twice about downloading 40MB of content from Bit Torrent, so why let them download from your servers? Sounds like bad design and poor planning. But feel free to blame the pirates, no-one likes them anyway.
I was more than happy to pay for it, fantastic game
Wouldnt an app that has advertisment in return more profit that if it had no adverts in but cost like $2 to purchase?
I think rovio (angry birds) realised this when releasing there app free of charge but with adds in.
My problem is that I already downloaded it, couldnt play it, and refunded which means next time i download it I cannot get a refund. Will the latest application be recognized as previously downloaded???
I am in the same boat as Pimpstrong… I have spent prob 20-30 dollars in the market..hardly a power user… I have tried every thing that intrests me..and I refund what does not work for my taste….
I d/led this game…could not play it…and refunded it…So its shot as a perm home in my phone is gone…
Had they not made the extra 40MB a seperate download they would not have that problem. This could have happened had they just sold way more copies than expected. Sure pirates suck, but lets not blame them for poor design.
This is a major flaw in the Android Market! You punish users who download a game early, when the servers are overloaded, and by only giving you a 24 hour window to get a refund you are forced to take a gamble. Do I get a refund since I wasn’t able to try it before I bought it, or do I wait until I can download the rest of the data (for days) and hope I end up liking the game? Google should give you 24 hours to get a refund AFTER YOU FIRST GET TO PLAY A GAME, not 24 hours after you purchased a game!
I choose to wait it out and I am glad I did. This is my favorite racing game, I much prefer the overhead view to the 1st person view on our small screens.
P.S. I ended up copying the files over from my dad’s SD Card, as he was able to download it overnight 2 days ago and it worked great.
Perhaps there would be fewer pirates and refunds if they would have offered a free demo. It could even be an additional revenue source with advertising that isn’t in the full version.
“Had they not made the extra 40MB a seperate download they would not have that problem.”
Unfortunately the Market has a App size limit of around 25 MB(not sure on the exact number). This was required to get everything in.