Piracy-Crippled Game From Hunted Cow Returns to App Store as 'Battle Dungeon: Risen'

I'm amazed by some of these responses..

So it's okay to steal somebodies time, because it is their time and not their property? These developers spend 100's of hours building these Apps in the hope that they get paid. They usually don't have the backing of a huge company like EA or Microsoft.

I don't know what their server side looked like, but I can tell you from experience that if they are using some sort of cloud hosting you usually pay per server or per transaction. They developer would need $X number of dollars per user per server. If a large number of those user's have paid nothing, then they can't afford to bring up more servers.

A decade ago I could see why people would pirate games. $60 for a game can be pretty expensive for a lot of people. But the majority of these types of games cost less than a gallon of milk.

iMacFarlane said:

Looks neat and all, but until I see a sentence that specifically states that the single-player experience in no way requires server connectivity, no thanks. Sad that we've found ourselves here, isn't it?

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Hi, I am Beelsebob, I'm the project lead on Battle Dungeon: Risen. I can confirm that no connection to any server is required.

Unggoy Murderer said:

Well said Sir.

On a side note, I hate people who say "I download stuff to try it out. If I like it, I'll buy it." The logic is so stupid, it's like stealing a car for a weekend, and then going back to the dealership, or driving it off a pier.

Just buy stuff, or look up reviews. Save the economy, and small businesses.

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Logic is silly... I can test drive a car if I wish. IF I pay for an app and it's **** I'm stuck with a crap app and out my X$. Sorry but people are stupid and their reviews can't be trusted. I am one of those, "I download stuff to try it out" people. Give a refund policy on apps and this wouldn't be an issue. I d/l, try, delete if crap, purchase if good. Developer gets my business/money if their product is worth it, no one is harmed if it's crap because I certainly don't keep it.... so basically I keep myself protected from the developer's possibly crappy app and them keeping my money if I'm not satisfied with their app.

I don't agree with piracy. But please, for the love of god, if you're going to comment - look up the definition of stealing. Piracy, no matter how wrong, is not stealing.

There's a reason, when the RIAA/MPAA take somebody to court, they sue for piracy, not theft.

nagromme said:

It's a shame that server-side/multiplayer gaming can be at the mercy of pirates.

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Unfortunately, its also at the mercy of legitimate sales - just see the recent Sim City debacle (and many similar cases in the past). Ironically, one of the reasons big developers like it is that it prevents piracy - provided you incorporate some sort of mechanism to make it difficult for pirated copies to access the servers. Of course, big developers with big brands like Sim City have the luxury of being able to **** off their customers and get away with it.

SmoMo said:

So are the developers saying that they sold X copies of the game, but for every legitimate copy there were Y pirate copies being played? I don't understand how this resulted in their server experiencing too much congestion unless Y is a really large number right?

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Or, X was a very small number and they were relying on sufficient income from X sales to pay to keep their server running.

Essentially, this sounds like a broken business model. If you're going to run a MUD game then you need some sort of income stream (subscriptions or ads) to keep enough server capacity to deal with fluctuations in demand. Maybe it was brought down by a spike in piracy, but if so it could just as easily been killed by a surge in demand from legitimate buyers (say it got made App of the Day or received a good write-up on a popular website...)

skwash said:

I'm amazed by some of these responses..

So it's okay to steal somebodies time, because it is their time and not their property? These developers spend 100's of hours building these Apps in the hope that they get paid.

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Its not about it being "ok" - personally, I pay for my software - its about exaggerating the scale of the problem to justify excessive penalties and intrusive enforcement regimes. The problem is developers who wishfully see every pirate copy as a lost sale and don't realise that the majority of pirate copies cost them nothing, and a fraction will eventually turn into real sales.

Except in this case, where a bad business model meant that every pirate copy did cost the developers money.

The same factors that make piracy easy (and, as some would argue, "not theft") are also hugely beneficial to software developers. If software was "physical" then most small developers would currently be begging their banks for a loan to finance manufacture of the 10,000-unit minimum order from Buy More (n.b. that would be the number you loan them - you won't get paid unless they actually sell them), or be haggling with bookstore owners who thought they deserved a 50% cut of a single copy ordered by a customer.

Software has always been prone to piracy - but then its always been vastly easier and cheaper to 'manufacture' than physical goods (even in the floppy disc/CD-ROM days) and now with 'app stores' there's no physical manufacture at all and Apple/Google handle all the distribution and billing for a modest 30% cut.

They developer would need $X number of dollars per user per server.

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...which is a broken business model. Even without piracy you're going to get an initial spike in sales slowing to a trickle over the following months, but you're going to be paying regular server charges indefinitely.

If you have an app which benefits from being server-based then its perfectly reasonable to have a subscription model driven by in-app purchases of game time (what gets my goat is when in-app-purchases get blurred with gameplay - e.g. by letting you buy in-game currency).

beelsebob said:

Hi, I am Beelsebob, I'm the project lead on Battle Dungeon: Risen. I can confirm that no connection to any server is required.

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Hi Beelsebob, what percentage of games being played were pirate ?
I'm not asking for your private sales data of course , just the ratio of games played over the number of known sales?

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AFDoc said:

Logic is silly... I can test drive a car if I wish. IF I pay for an app and it's **** I'm stuck with a crap app and out my X$. Sorry but people are stupid and their reviews can't be trusted. I am one of those, "I download stuff to try it out" people. Give a refund policy on apps and this wouldn't be an issue. I d/l, try, delete if crap, purchase if good. Developer gets my business/money if their product is worth it, no one is harmed if it's crap because I certainly don't keep it.... so basically I keep myself protected from the developer's possibly crappy app and them keeping my money if I'm not satisfied with their app.

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You can try free versions of thousands of Apps so you can just stick to those ones and all your needs are met.

But consider this, the quality of an App is subjective and sometimes you may buy an App, not like it at first, continue playing ( you know, because you've paid for it now and you may as well see if it gets better) and wham, imagine this, you change your opinion.
Turns out you see, you had been wrong, it wasn't **** at all, it was smarter than you had first thought.

Sure, we could design all our games to be simplistic and 1-dimensional experiences where we try and impress the people with the shortest attention spans, like the worst Hollywood summer action movies.
Or we could benefit from the knowledge that you've bought the game and are prepared to invest some of your time into your investment before you just give up like a spoiled brat.

But you personally, are not even part of this dynamic anyway, no one cares about you because you are too poor or stupid to spend a dollar and see if you like something so just keep going ahead and pirating away, the technologies improve on both sides all the time, one day you might find the smart hackers making this possible for you have stopped, enjoy it while you can I guess.

SmoMo said:

"you can just stick to those ones and all your needs are met."

"But consider this, the quality of an App is subjective and sometimes you may buy an App, not like it at first, continue playing..."

"invest some of your time into your investment before you just give up like a spoiled brat."

"But you personally, are not even part of this dynamic anyway, no one cares about you because you are too poor or stupid to spend a dollar and see if you like something.

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I can't imagine why people think you game programmers are overvalued, and don't want to just throw their money at you blindly. What a mystery.

I stopped trial-downloading games, and thus, stopped buying games.
Where you had a potential customer, now you don't.
Rejoice.

AFDoc said:

Logic is silly... I can test drive a car if I wish. IF I pay for an app and it's **** I'm stuck with a crap app and out my X$. Sorry but people are stupid and their reviews can't be trusted. I am one of those, "I download stuff to try it out" people. Give a refund policy on apps and this wouldn't be an issue. I d/l, try, delete if crap, purchase if good. Developer gets my business/money if their product is worth it, no one is harmed if it's crap because I certainly don't keep it.... so basically I keep myself protected from the developer's possibly crappy app and them keeping my money if I'm not satisfied with their app.

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Maybe you should try out Android then. Google Play allows you to "try out" every app for 14 days, because this is your refund period. If you don't like your App you just press a button, the app is deleted from your device and you get your money back.

A shame something like this is not implemented n the iOS AppStore.

ThunderSkunk said:

I can't imagine why people think you game programmers are overvalued, and don't want to just throw their money at you blindly. What a mystery.

I stopped trial-downloading games, and thus, stopped buying games.
Where you had a potential customer, now you don't.
Rejoice.

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But this is my point exactly, we don't really care about you, as I said have fun pirating all you can, I certainly did the same when I was a kid back on the Amiga and the Atari ST.
( piracy is suggested to be one of the reasons that home computer market collapsed in the 90s when faced with the far less pirate-able console competitors )

What I was trying to tell you, and I'll try to explain it better this time, is that some forms of art are catchy and rewarding from the very first contact. Just think of whatever cheesy pop song has just been released. However when you have the whole album it is often the songs you didn't like to start with turn out to be the ones you end up loving in the end. And you often end up hating the catchy tunes as you learn how flat they really are.

Any artist in every medium has this same scenario, do they want to pander to first impressions and folk with short attention spans, or stick to their own judgement and make something truly awesome.

I'm dissing you, personally, because you are this first type of human, you want to try a game for a few minutes ( for free) and then you abort it if you dont get instant gratification.

Absolutely fine with me, maybe this is the best you can get out of life, as I said before maybe you are just stupid, and I'm happy for mentally disabled people to play whatever games they want, hey do it for free, life owes you one right!

But you don't have any moral entitlement to do that, be humble, and graciously acknowledge the time and skill of the artists who have made these games for you. That won't cost you anything after all.

cmChimera said:

No it's not. 1. When you steal a car, you're not leaving the original car behind. 2. You get to test drive cars.

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Does that make it right? No.

Just because the original is left doesn't mean you can take it. That's the excuse of a 8 year old, absolutely pathetic.

soundr said:

1. Then lets compare it to counterfeiting money. I'm sure you see nothing wrong with that.

2. You don't get to test drive cars without permission.

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1. Well first off, I didn't express an opinion as to whether it was right or wrong to pirate a game. I simply said your analogy was poor. Secondly, so is this one. Counterfeiting money doesn't do anything until you buy something with fake money. At that point you have tricked someone into giving you the product, which again is not duplicated, for no money at all essentially. You should stop trying to compare copyright infringement to other concepts. Copyright infringement is like copyright infringement. Leave it at that.

2. What's your point? You can't trial an iPhone game unless there's a free version. If you're going to buy a car, you're going to be able to test drive it.

Unggoy Murderer said:

Does that make it right? No.

Just because the original is left doesn't mean you can take it. That's the excuse of a 8 year old, absolutely pathetic.

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Where in my post did I express an opinion on the morality of copyright infringement?

Slightly tangental point, but doesn't apple pride iOS because it reduces piracy? Obviously not enough. Obviously there will always be pirates so long as there is digital content to steal. This is proof in point that even the most locked down os is vulnerable to piracy.

That said, this is the first I'm hearing of this, but it begs the question how many copies were actually pirated and how many copies were projected to sell. I would have to think millions, as a server shouldn't just buckle like this.

Unggoy Murderer said:

On a side note, I hate people who say "I download stuff to try it out. If I like it, I'll buy it." The logic is so stupid, it's like stealing a car for a weekend, and then going back to the dealership, or driving it off a pier.

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It's your logic I don't understand (nor the analogies). You do know you can "test drive" a car, right? All software should offer some kind of trial portal before you buy it.

Just buy stuff, or look up reviews. Save the economy, and small businesses.

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Yes indeed. Let's all just fall in line with glazed eyes.

Wow. A lot of people are really putting a lot of effort into hiding behind semantics to justify software and media piracy.

kanselmo said:

Wow. A lot of people are really putting a lot of effort into hiding behind semantics to justify software and media piracy.

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True. Amazing how some folks can justify anything. Even stealing or whatever they want to call it.

Perhaps piracy itself may not be considered stealing but using a server connection without paying for it is. As somebody who writes software that uses a cloud connection for multiple users I can tell you if you use my connection without permission you are in fact stealing bandwidth with me. Bandwidth is something I have to pay for per user much like electricity or making a long distance phone call. Using an online based game when you should not be is no different than cheating a phone company or utility company by not paying them but using their services.

That is theft and the reason why this particular game was hurt.

With that said I do question how this particular company was going to keep their servers going long term anyway. If their means of paying for the server was the sale of the game even then eventually their cash would have dried up anyway and they would have had to shut down the servers. You cannot maintain a large volume of server connections for a long period of time without a steady flow of cash. Online games for mobile are going to need to figure out a way to keep cash coming into the company or this model will never work. Pirates or no pirates eventually people would stop buying the app and they would not be able to maintain the server costs for those who already own the game and still want to play.

Unggoy Murderer said:

Well said Sir.

On a side note, I hate people who say "I download stuff to try it out. If I like it, I'll buy it." The logic is so stupid, it's like stealing a car for a weekend, and then going back to the dealership, or driving it off a pier.

Just buy stuff, or look up reviews. Save the economy, and small businesses.

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On another side note, I hate people who say "Well said Sir".

This reason closed down some of the games I worked on years ago. It's a shame it affects legit customers too. Silly pirates, how much did this game originally cost?

swagi said:

A shame something like this is not implemented n the iOS AppStore.

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agreed.

anarchopath said:

Finally someone on the internet who can think with his brain instead of his emotions.

Scarcity is the root concept you seem to be getting at. Concepts of property arose to avoid conflict over scarce resources. Almost universally, moral norms and justice systems across humanity stem from concepts of property in scarce resources...
...
...

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Arguing about semantics of "property" does nothing but dance around the true subject at hand, namely that of fair trade.
Since the beginning of human civilization, humans utilized the concept of trade, whereby two parties agree to exchange goods and/or services fairly, for the benefit of both parties. It still continues to this day, though people became detached with the concept with invent of currency and 3rd parties such as stores/shops and other various retailers.

There are a couple of core examples of fair trade:
A. I offer you a resource in exchange for another resource (incl. gold/money)
Ex: when you buy groceries, clothing, housing, tools, electronics, etc.. and pay money for it.
B. I offer you a service in exchange for a resource (incl. gold/money)
Ex: when you go to the physician/dentist/psychiatrist/gynecologist, or a lawyer, or a barber, or hire a plumber, and pay them in exchange for their service and/or expertise.
C. I offer you a service in exchange for another service (i.e. "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.")

The case of online piracy almost universally deals with illegally obtained copyrighted content. The content itself, whether a piece of entertainment (e.g. song, a movie, or a game) or a utility/productivity tool (i.e. an app, or other piece of software), is made available to end user via some form of digital distribution.
The aforementioned content is qualified as both a resource and a service, provided by the developers/producers to the, and for the benefit of the, end user. So, utilizing the concept of fair trade, by simply using the content, one becomes morally obligated to reimburse the content owner for their hard work.

So, to summarize:
-The content creator put hard work into creating/providing something for user's benefit.
-By obtaining (e.g. downloading it, legally or illegally) and/or using it, the user acknowledged that the content in question is useful/beneficial to them.
-Consequently, by doing the above, the user acknowledged that the content creator fulfilled their side of the trade.
-With that, it is user's moral obligation to fulfill/finalize the trade by reimbursing the IP owner(s) and/or creator(s) for their work.

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satyrica said:

On another side note, I hate people who say "Well said Sir".

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Well said Sir!

Tbh, I do pirate games.
And if I like it I buy it.
Ive found out games I like this way.
When I dont like them, I just uninstall them.

I believe game company should have "trials" to test out games.
This was the user can try the game out and see if one likes it or not.

AFDoc said:

agreed.

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Apple can prevent people from downgrading to an older iOS version but they can't do a thing with stopping people from pirating apps. They have an app out that takes a second to run that cracks most apps. I guess Apple is trying to stop this by patching exploits used to JB but a person doesn't even need to JB to install cracked apps.

NewAnger said:

Apple can prevent people from downgrading to an older iOS version but they can't do a thing with stopping people from pirating apps. They have an app out that takes a second to run that cracks most apps. I guess Apple is trying to stop this by patching exploits used to JB but a person doesn't even need to JB to install cracked apps.

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And how do you install cracked apps without a jail broken device?

Not all jail breakers are pirates, but all pirates jail break.

thewitt said:

And how do you install cracked apps without a jail broken device?

Not all jail breakers are pirates, but all pirates jail break.

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Telling how is against forum rules of course.

NewAnger said:

Telling how is against forum rules of course.

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He's obviously just making a point that without JB, you cant install cracked apps.