Piracy blights iPhone’s Car Jack Streets

This is ludicrous, do people not realise that when the pirate small titles like this on emerging platforms it literally cripples the company. If you want o kick Paul Farley in the knackers at least have the stones to do to his face!

I have to disagree. It's not as if those pirating the software actually would have bought it in the first place.
As an iPhone developer, I would love to be naive enough to believe that every pirated copy of my app is a lost sale. The truth of the matter is that those who are using pirated copies would never have purchased it in the first place and so in reality the only thing I am loosing is my temper

So someone that basicaly copied the design and ideas of someone elses game is moaning that someone has copied their copy...?

How do they know this information anyway?

Mr Jolly, a bit of research would tell you that the developers behind Car Jack Streets were core members of the original Grand Theft Auto team.

OK so it's clearly influenced by GTA, but having not seen the game I cannot comment on how close to the original it may or may not be.

But to dismiss piracy on the basis that the pirates have ripped off a rip off of another game is also wrong.

Every form of entertainment is influenced by previous work – look at music, film, books, art etc. Total originality is a very rare and special thing which does not happen very often.

The developers would have developed their own code and that is what is being stolen by the pirates. It would be a very different matter if the developers had copied original GTA code, then I might have some sympathy with the argument that they got what they deserved.

But developers who do their own coding and don't rip off other developers work deserve to be paid for their hard work, coding the games that give us all so much enjoyment.

Everyone who knows me knows how strongly I object to piracy, if you can't afford something, make do with demos or free games.

So the other argument that they were never going to buy it is just a way for pirates to justify theft to themselves i.e. I wasn't going to buy it anyway so no one is losing out.

Well if you weren't going to buy it then you shouldn't play it, you know fine well that it is a commercial product and that the developer is making it available at a price. You wouldn't steal a car and excuse you behaviour by saying you were never going to buy it – theft is theft, be it physical or digital.

I don't agree with the whole 'They wouldn't have bought the game anyway argument', if that's the case, I suppose they stole their iphone as well huh?

@Leroy

The pirated games are running on jailbroken iPhones. I'm not sure how owning an iphone translates to those same people being willing to buy software for it as well.

If you know the process for jailbreaking an iPhone, then you will realise that it's not something that average Joe is ever likely to do.

I would love to hear your argument for why each pirated copy is a lost sale. I am especially interested in your mind reading skills which will be able to tell you that these people would have been willing to spend money on a app is they couldn't find it on the jailbreak sites they frequent.

From my experience, they have little or no actual interest in applications beyond the fact that they are free on such sites.

@Peter

So are your saying the majority of them stole their iphone's and had it jailbroken, or did they actually have to buy an iphone in the first place to jailbreak? Because to me the main reason for buying an iphone is for the apps since there's a heck of a lot of cheaper mobile phones / multimedia players (ipod touch) to make phone calls or playing videos with.

A few posters here are living in some fantasy world. In this word people are willing to pay for something they can get for free. Then they have a double fantasy of thinking that they can control piracy on the internet. It's shocking really to think that in this day and age people think that they can stop digital piracy. It's actually such lame thinking that it is amusing.

I agree that theft is theft, Pirate Bay are naive in the extreme. Systems have to pay for themselves or they will collapse and since Pirate Bay have nothing to offer of their own their philosophy would end our industry.

Having said that, piracy is a fact. No matter how much we prosecute or impose preventative measures the pirates will always be a few days or weeks behind.

The real concern here is that TAG might reasonably be expected to raise the unit price to cover their costs. But with the current trend toward ultra cheap games it puts independents like TAG in an impossible situation. And if TAG can't turn a profit on a successful title then the big players can't either.

This is still an emerging branch of the games industry. This kind of problem could cripple the whole thing. And that would be a shame when it's just starting to get really interesting.

Don't some of you who think this is Ok realise it is illegal and puts peoples jobs and family livelihoods in danger.

If you're happy to be blatantly breaking the law then keep letting yourselves be known, and we will get round to taking money from your greasy little pockets.

Bill

I'm not sure telling people they're breaking the law is really going to bother most people.

I just bought Car Jack. Its pretty dam good, been wanting a GTA on phone for ages. Some bug fixes and improvements needed to make it excellent. (Namely controls, Car physics/collisions)

But at the end of the day, I got it for £2 ... I'm sure I've bought more expensive toilet paper. You've got to be uber tight not to shell out 2quid for a game this good. Plus if jail break phone it voids the warranty. I'd rather pay £2 then end up with a £400 paper weight if it breaks and Apple refuse to fix it.