[mcav]

Don't worry about it.

The iPhone app store has enough DRM to move piracy below your radar. Casual users won't pirate your app; the few who might go to that effort aren't worth your time. If your app was available via direct download, an anti-piracy scheme might be useful, but for app store applications you needn't worry. Spend your time making other improvements to your app that will attract more players.

[alex_c]

The iPhone app store has enough DRM to move piracy below your radar.

Do you have numbers for that? Anecdotal evidence (forum posts from developers, statistics provided by companies hawking anti-piracy solutions) suggest that piracy is actually a significant percentage of all app installs.

I'm not entering into a debate about spending time fighting piracy versus spending time adding new features. I'm just curious about your assertion that piracy of app store applications is negligible. Is it based on specific experiences, or gut feeling?

[mcav]

Gut feeling.

[HalcyonMuse]

Er, isn't this a valid concern? I don't own an iPhone, so I don't REALLY know what I'm talking about here, but as a college student, I know quite a few people with iPhones who pirate ALL of their applications. I get the impression that they have pretty much the same applications as people paying for them.

[mcav]

Piracy exists, sure. But I would suggest that iPhone developers not worry about it. Anti-piracy measures for iPhone applications would require time and energy invested that would arguably be better spent improving the software.

Users who pirate applications aren't necessarily lost customers; they might not have purchased it legally even if they couldn't pirate it.

[alex_c]

For an MMORPG, that IS a valid concern though. Pirated copies take up server resources and increase costs. Piracy also makes it more difficult to enforce rules - if everyone has to pay, closing a misbehaving account is feasible, but if a significant percentage of the userbase pirates it, then they can just make any number of free accounts, and degrade the experience for paying users.

[thorax]

Installous/Crackulous/etc seem like they're pretty popular. I know semi-casual users using them.