This whole Dead Trigger situation seems to be getting more and more interesting. In case you’re not familiar, Dead Trigger is a zombie shooter game and last week Madfinger Games, the company behind it, caused quite an uproar when they said the Android app was now free because of such high piracy.
One could easily take that as it is and automatically assume that the Android Market, errr, Google Play Store is a bad place for developers, however, it’s definitely not. One problem with the whole situation is that the developer provided no data, logs, screenshots, etc., to prove that piracy was such a problem.
Now, Dead Trigger is also free on iOS which the CEO, Marek Rabas of Madfinger Games, went on to say that the number of pirates on iOS is comparable to the number of jailbroken devices, and that he’s rather disappointed with the “lack of protection” from Google and Apple to developers.
Interestingly enough, in last week’s Android Headlines podcast, we talked about a number of topics, including this which you can check out here. All in all, we pretty much came to the conclusion that 1) If piracy was such a problem, there should be proof shown for it and not just throwing out accusations, and 2) The developer likely wasn’t making enough money by selling the app and instead focusing solely on a freemium model with in app purchases.
The whole story is a bit suspicious, but a rather slick (though potentially sleazy) move to gain attention and buzz.