游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

智能手机游戏开发者称盗版并非其关注重点

发布时间:2011-05-27 09:49:25 Tags:,

作者:Paul Hyman

面对游戏的盗版行为,掌机供应商和发行商选择了默默地为索尼NGP和任天堂3DS安上了新一代防剽窃功能,而一些智能手机游戏开发者对此似乎很从容淡定,他们已经有了应对灾难的法宝?

盗版软件已经对前代的掌机造成重创,这让人不得不为新掌机模式甚忧;盗版的魔爪伸向智能手机游戏时,开发者似乎不以为然:我们还有比盗版更打紧的事要办呢!

最近的采访表明,这不是少数智能手机游戏开发者的态度。

正是在两年以前,后来的索尼副总裁Peter Dille提及盗版暴行对PSP造成的损失时,曾无奈表示,“我们坚信盗版行为已经从我们的PSP软件销售中大赚一笔了,是时候让整个行业联合起来解决问题了。”

在当年同时期内,任天堂也承认拜盗版所赐,他们损失了上万亿日元,首当其冲的是支持玩家下载盗版DS游戏的R4“flash carts”。

掌上设备游戏盗版让发行商和分析师忧心不已——也难怪索尼和任天堂各自在新一代掌机(游戏邦注:索尼NGP和任天堂3DS)中安装了反盗版功能。

据任天堂驻英国总经理David Yarnton所言,3DS是“反盗版的最佳利器之一”。任天堂当然不可能列举3DS反盗版措施的技术独到之处。但Yarnton表示:“我们已经掌握了多项提升安全性和防护性的措施……”

当月,再次被问及是否会进行更详细的反盗版说明时,任天堂发言人只是称:“任天堂3DS拥有最先进的反盗版措施。至于安全措施细节我们不便透露(商业机密),也不想讨论任天堂3DS系统中的对抗措施的详细情况。”面对同样的问题,索尼则选择了沉默。

当被问及盗版行为对其掌机游戏策略产生的影响,育碧保持沉默;美国艺电同样拒绝回应关于这个问题的任何e-mail和电话。显然,盗版在业界仍然是个敏感的话题。

但根据Gamasutra的采访,在游戏业界的另一领域——智能手机游戏开发者对iOS和Android平台上的盗版行为却并不紧张。

究其原因有二:首先是苹果和谷歌在反盗版工作上已经很为开发者着想;更重要的一点是,当下的“免费试玩模式”正在盛行。开发者称,当一款游戏免费时,还有哪个心智正常的人会费尽心思搞破坏?

mobile-game(from dinabadajoz.com)

mobile-game(from dinabadajoz.com)

Adam Martin是前NCsoft欧洲区域首席执行官,现任的Red Glasses首席执行官(游戏邦注:Red Glasses是一家英国iPhone游戏工作室,代表作包括《Star Catcher》),据他观察:“大多数人(iOS和Android游戏开发者)不必担心盗版。与其把时间浪费在苦想反盗版的办法上,还不如好好想想怎么开发出另一款软件来挣钱。这个说法对大型工作室当然不适用,但对个人和小型开发团队来说,大多数人的态度就是‘生命太短,无暇防盗’。”

Brian Robbins就是“大多数人”中的一员。作为Riptide Games的创始人,自从苹果App Store在2008年7月开业以来,他就已开始创建iOS游戏(不过这是他在Riptide以及之前的公司工作时的事了)。再过一两个月,他即将发布Riptide的首款免费游戏《My Pet Zombie》,该游戏可运行于iPhone和iPad平台。

起先,Robbins也认为盗版是个大问题——市场上70%到80%关于其早期开发的游戏拷贝版本属于盗版软件。但这个难题不是他能解决的。

所以,他并不打算与盗版者们打知识产权“保卫战”,而是决定只花一小部分时间和窃贼们“打招呼”,大部分时间还是致力于提升游戏品质,更好地服务于那些确实花钱买游戏的玩家。

Robbins表态,“我当然不是鼓励别人盗版我的软件,我不会让他们不劳而获。所以如果我不能阻止他们,那也得给他们点教训。”

一开始发现某个游戏被破解,对Robbins来说还是小菜一碟。在一些游戏中,他插入了提示信息迫使“窃贼”返回App Store购买。而在另一些游戏中,他放入一些破坏游戏体验的代码——剽窃者在游戏中可能跳不高跑不快;或者玩过几次后,软件就可能崩溃。在另一款游戏中,如果非法复本被启动三次,剽窃者就会在游戏中得到“我是小偷”的成就并且公之于众。Robbins为这个创意而自豪不已。

Robbins感叹:不幸的是,破解软件的工具比以前进化得更高级了,找出被“黑”的游戏也比以前困难得多了。

事情又有了转机。自从Riptide改变工作重心——主要从事免费游戏开发(主要靠广告赞助和应用内置付费功能盈利),Robbins顿悟:盗版就不是个“事”。

Robbins解释道:“我不能想象有谁会为了一款免费游戏而挖空心思进行破解。并且,那些非免费游戏也比以前便宜得多了,大概就是一两美元的事。”

虽然盗版行为仍然折磨着游戏产业,但Robbins认为“黑”游戏的人在玩家中所占比例相当小。“苹果称现有超过1亿6千万的iOS设备。如果iOS市场上有5%到10%的玩家使用破解版游戏——就算是20%到30%好了,眼下仍然有1亿合法用户。”

Robbins认为自己并没有因为盗版而造成任何经济损失,他不认为被盗版一款游戏就是损失一笔钱,尽管其他人可不这么想。“我不相信如果‘盗贼’无法‘黑’入某款游戏,他就会购买这款游戏。他只会把目标转向其他游戏罢了。”

Riptide在不久的将来还会试水Android平台,Robbins希望还能继续在那个平台上贯彻免费游戏的理念,他认为Android的用户中肯付费的人甚至会更少。

Robbins表示:“我看不到在Android上发行付费软件的时机,这不是因为盗版行为猖獗,只是因为我觉得通常情况下没人会在Android应用上花钱。我们最好还是靠广告赞助来贯彻我们的免费理念,就像我在iOS平台上所做的一样。”

Markus Nigrin是圣地亚哥Windmill Apps工作室(游戏邦注:其代表作是《Japanese Garden》)的首席执行官。该工作室已经在开发iOS和Android应用了,他也不相信当前局势已经到了需要研发防范机制来扼制盗版的程度。

他列出了三个原因:“一是防范机制会使游戏代码复杂化,出现漏洞的可能性就增大了;二是就算研发出了防范机制,我想那些盗版狂人大概会很高兴地接受挑战吧;三是你只是与一帮高调张扬,但数量却微不足道的人计较。”

“不应该把剽窃的东西当成销售损失,因为对许多玩家来说,那只是临时复制品。应用商店里那些为数惊人的盗版产品甚至从来没被开封。就算打开了,删掉也是一两秒钟的事。

他还表示:“我认为有那么些人只是想积攒大量的盗版软件。我不知道他们这么做的动机何在,而且那些数据也未必真实,不足为患。我听说我的软件有10万个盗版,但这个数字毫无意义。因为也许这当中的9万5千个都是可被追踪到的盗版产品,而且它们可能也从来没被打开过。我还有必要操心么?”

Nigrin认为,与其浪费一个星期的时间来防盗版,不如将这些时间用于提升游戏品质,这才是生财之道。

然而,这并不意味着盗版行为就不值得重视——Nigrin还是指望谷歌和苹果花点时间和精力打击盗版行为。

Nigrin称:“谷歌和苹果最近的防盗版措施有多成功,我心里没谱。但我可以告诉你,我不知道有哪个和我一样的开发者会在Android或者iOS平台上,花时间来实施防护机制。”

在此之前,Nigrin在Twitter针对他认识的独立iOS游戏开发者做了一个非正式的调查。他收到的五份反馈,都称自己不再像一年以前那样采取反盗版措施了。

“他们都不干了。有人告诉我,‘为什么我要和一帮16岁毛头小子计较?有这个功夫,我不如好好去做我的游戏。’”

Pat Toulouse可没有参与那份调查,不然Nigrin也该知道有人对待不劳而获的行为采取了强硬的手段。Pat Toulouse声称盗版影响了iOS平台上90%的游戏,在Android上则是95%。

Toulouse是Ratrod工作室(位于加拿大渥太华)的创始人,该工作室为iOS和Android等平台开发游戏。

Toulouse叹言:“对于那些独立开发者或者小型工作室来说,他们夜以继日地做好一个游戏,如果不及时调整项目运营策略,到头来只会被盗版者砸了饭碗。”盗版者的速度之快已超乎想像——一款刚刚在官方应用商店发行的游戏,12小时后就能看到盗版了。

Toulouse称,为了探测非法安装版,Ratrod已经开发出探测工具并将其安装入所有游戏中。该探测工具可以检查特定的文件夹和编码,并且查证这些文件夹和编码是否经过修改。“我们的探测方法非常准确。数据结果会发送到我们的服务器上存档。这样我们就能获取每个游戏设备的盗版率、手机操作系统版本、国家、统一标识、IP地址、游戏信息和转化率等资料。”Toulouse对此颇有信心。

Toulouse认为盗版数量并不能代表销售损失。根据观察到的数据,许多用户可能最终都不会购买游戏,也就是说,从盗版到购买的玩家比率并不高——0.025%。

“但从这个比例中你可以得知问题有多严重,为将来的项目早做打算有多重要。”

他对其他开发者的建议如下:保持低价,因为价格越高,去下载盗版的人也就越多。游戏越大,下载时间越长,难度越大,盗版也越多。不间断更新游戏功能、内容或者修复漏洞,可以降低盗版率。

他还推荐开发者安装Google Alert。但凡有网站提到你的游戏的名称,这个脚本软件就能自动生成那些网站的列表,然后作为日常报告发送给你。这样你可以根据《数码千年版权法案》提出移除非法下载服务的请求。

虽然Toulouse承认盗版的现象无法根除,但他认为自己的反盗版措施是成功的。

Toulouse还提到:“至少我的措施使盗版减少了。运用不同的策略,我们去年成功地削减了超过15%的盗版率。按百万下载量来算,15%意味着上千美元的额外销售量。就凭这点,密切关注盗版形势、有根有据地调整运营模式就是绝对必要的。”(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Smartphone Piracy: ‘Life’s Too Short To Worry About It’

by Paul Hyman

[While console providers and publishers are mum about the next generation of piracy prevention as implemented in the Sony NGP and Nintendo 3DS, smartphone developers share their best strategies to combat the scourge.]

Software piracy may have taken a heavy toll on the previous generation of handhelds, and it’s a matter of concern for the new models, but when it comes to smartphones, developers shrug. There are more pressing matters, they say.

At least that’s what anecdotal evidence from a handful of recent interviews indicates.

Exactly two years ago, then-Sony senior VP Peter Dille stressed the enormity of piracy’s effect on the PSP: “We’re convinced that piracy has taken out a big chunk of our software sales on PSP. It’s been a problem that the industry has to address together.”

That same month, Nintendo admitted that it lost trillions of yen a year thanks to software piracy, much of it due to R4 “flash carts” that allow users to download and play pirated DS games.

So it wasn’t surprising — with portable game piracy such a hot-button issue among publishers and analysts — that Sony and Nintendo turned up the anti-piracy juice on their next generation of handhelds — the Sony NGP and the Nintendo 3DS.

According to Nintendo UK GM David Yarnton, the 3DS is “one of our best pieces of equipment in that respect.” Logically, Nintendo hasn’t enumerated the technical specifics of its anti-piracy measures but, says Yarnton, “There are a lot of things we’ve learned over time to try and improve the security and protection…”

This month, asked to further report on its anti-piracy efforts for this story, a Nintendo spokesperson would say only that “Nintendo 3DS contains the most up-to-date anti-piracy measures available. We do not discuss product security details (for obvious reasons), nor can we discuss the details of countermeasures available in the Nintendo 3DS system.” Sony chose not to comment.

So did Ubisoft, when asked what effect piracy had on its portable gaming strategy; Electronic Arts wouldn’t respond to multiple e-mails and phone calls. It’s clearly still a sensitive topic.

But elsewhere, on the smartphone side of the industry, the developers Gamasutra interviewed report they are far less concerned about piracy on the iOS and Android games they are creating.

The reason is twofold: the good “anti-piracy” work Apple and Google are doing on the developers’ behalf and, more importantly, the current trend toward “free-to-play” — or freemium — games. When a game is free, developers say, who in their right mind is going to make the effort to crack it?

“Most people [in the iOS and Android space] could care less about piracy,” observes Adam Martin who had been CTO of NCsoft Europe and is now CEO of Red Glasses, an iPhone studio in the UK that developed the game Star Catcher. “Obviously this doesn’t apply to the bigger studios, but for individuals and small teams, every moment you spend thinking about piracy is a moment you could have spent doing another app and getting sales. Most people seem to be taking a ‘life’s too short to worry about it’ view.”

Brian Robbins is one of those people. As founder of Denver-based Riptide Games, he has personally — at Riptide and at previous companies — been building iOS games since the App Store launch in July 2008. In the next month or two he’s about to launch Riptide’s first big freemium title, My Pet Zombie, for both iPhone and iPad.

At first, Robbins saw piracy as a significant problem — between 70 and 80 percent of the copies of some of his earlier games were illegal ones — but not necessarily a problem he could solve.

And so, rather than spinning his wheels trying to protect his IP, he decided to spend just a small portion of his time trying to annoy the thieves while using the majority of his time improving his games and keeping happy the customers who were actually paying for his titles.

“I knew I wasn’t going to convince the pirates to pay for my software, but I’d be darned if I was going to let them enjoy the fruits of our labor for free,” he said. “So if I couldn’t stop them, I was going to do my best to aggravate them.”

Since at first it was easy for him to detect whether one of his games had been cracked, he inserted prompts in some titles to direct hackers back to the App Store to make a purchase. In other games, he put in code that would degrade the playing experience — perhaps the pirate couldn’t jump as high or run as fast. Or the game might even randomly crash after several plays. And, in one game, if an illegitimate copy was launched three times, the pirate earned an “I’m A Thief” achievement for everyone to see. That’s the one Robbins is most proud of.

Unfortunately, he says, the tools to crack apps are far more sophisticated than in the past, and determining whether one of his games has been hacked is not as easy as before.

Game Advertising Online

But suddenly piracy has become a “non-issue” for Robbins since, he says, Riptide has switched over mainly to freemium games that are either ad-sponsored or supported by in-app purchases.

“I can’t imagine anyone taking the time to crack a game that they can have for free,” he says. “And those games that aren’t free are a lot less pricey than they used to be, perhaps just a dollar or two.”

While piracy still plagues the industry, Robbins says that it’s a fairly small percentage of users who exert the effort to hack games. “I mean, Apple says there are over 160 million devices out there. If five to 10 percent of the iOS market uses cracked versions — even if it’s as high as 20 to 30 percent — you’re still looking at 100 million devices that are legitimate and whose owners aren’t pirating.”

Robbins is convinced that he hasn’t lost any income through piracy since, despite what others might believe, he doesn’t consider a pirated game a lost sale. “No one can convince me that if a pirate was unable to hack into one of our games, he would have bought it. No, he would have just gone on to crack somebody else’s game.”

Riptide will be testing the waters in the Android space in the not-too-distant future, and Robbins expects to carry over the same freemium philosophy, especially since he believes there are even fewer Android users of paid apps.

“I don’t see a scenario now where we would release a paid app on Android, not because of the ramp in piracy that I’ve heard is there, but I don’t think people generally would pay for paid apps on Android,” he says. “We’d rather stick with the freemium side and do that in a sponsored way, just as we do on iOS.”

Markus Nigrin, CEO at San Diego-based Windmill Apps (Japanese Garden), is already building apps for both platforms and doesn’t believe piracy is a pressing enough problem for developers to warrant spending time on protection mechanisms.

There are three reasons for that, he says: “Protection mechanisms make your code more complex, which is likely to increase the chance of introducing bugs; you create a challenge for app crackers who will be happy to take it on; and you are fighting a group that may be loud, but in reality is rather small.”

“And no one should misconstrue pirated copies as lost sales,” he says, “since, for many in that audience, it is more of a hoarding reflex than anything else. There are incredible stories out there that most of the pirated apps are never even opened. Or they are opened for one or two seconds and then just deleted.

“I think some people just want to accumulate tons of pirated apps. I don’t know what the point is, but those numbers are so distorting that essentially they aren’t relevant. I hear there are 100,000 pirated copies of my apps out there, but that number is completely meaningless because probably 95,000 of them went through automated downloading services and they triggered a counter somewhere, but were probably never even opened. Why should that bother me?”

Besides, he says, one week of coding spent to improve his apps, make better games, and create upgrades and updates is better for his business than one week spent on preventing piracy.

However, that doesn’t mean piracy isn’t a problem — but Nigrin looks to Google and Apple to put in the time and effort to discourage jailbreakers.

“I have no real data on how successful Google and Apple’s recent approaches really are,” he says, “but I can tell you that I don’t know a single peer developer on either Android or iOS who would spend time on implementing copy protection mechanisms anymore.”

Prior to speaking to Gamasutra, Nigrin says he conducted a quick, informal Twitter survey of indie iOS developers he knows. He got five responses and, he says, not one has anti-piracy measures in place anymore even though all of them did a year prior.

“They all stepped back from it,” he reports. “One said to me, ‘Why should I fight an army of 16-year-olds who has way too much free time if, instead, I could really just improve my app in the same time period?’”

But Pat Toulouse wasn’t part of Nigrin’s informal survey. If he had been, Nigrin would have learned that Toulouse is adamant about aggressively attacking the piracy that he claims affects around 90 percent of iOS titles and over 95 percent of those on the Android platform.

Toulouse is president and founder of Ottawa, Canada-based Ratrod Studio (Hockey Fight Pro), which develops games for iOS, Android, and other platforms.

“For indie developers or smaller studios that are working around the clock to make a good quality title, this can put you out of business if you don’t adapt your game plan quickly enough,” he says, adding that pirated versions of games start appearing as early as 12 hours after their official launch in their respective app stores.

Toulouse reveals that, in order to detect illegal installations, Ratrod has developed detection tools that are being implemented in all its games that check for specific files and codes and verify if they have been modified.

“Our detection methods are very accurate,” he says, “and the data is then sent to our servers which keep everything on record. It allows us to determine the piracy rates per device, OS version, and country, and also keeps track of device UUIDs, IP addresses, play sessions, and conversion rates.”

Ratrod Studio’s Hockey Fight

Toulouse recognizes that the number of pirated installations doesn’t necessarily represent the amount of sales lost since, he says, a large number of users might not have ended up paying for the game, as evidenced by the very low conversion rate data observed from pirates-to-paying customers — 0.025 percent.

“But it certainly gives you an idea of how serious the problem is and why it’s important to keep it in consideration for your future projects,” he notes.

His best suggestions to other developers are these: keep the price of your app low since the pricier the app, the more people will be encouraged to find and download a pirated version. The heavier your app, the harder and more time-consuming it is to download, the more temptation there is. Finally, updating your game once in a while with new features, content, or bug fixes can also help reduce piracy rates.

He also recommends setting a Google Alert of your app name, which will automatically send you a daily notice with a list of all the web sites mentioning your game. You can then file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) form to request removal of the files off the various servers, since they are hosting a pirated version of your game.

Toulouse considers his anti-piracy efforts to be successful ones, although he accepts the reality that piracy is inherently unstoppable.

“But it can certainly be reduced,” he says. “By adapting different strategies, we managed to trim our piracy rates by more than 15 percent over the past year. Considering a total amount of downloads ranging in the millions, 15 percent represents thousands of dollars in additional sales. That’s surely a good enough reason to continue to monitor the situation closely and adapt our business model accordingly.”(source:gamasutra


上一篇:

下一篇: