14 DAY TRIAL // After revealing yesterday that pirates stole their game, Monument Valley developer Ustwo has returned to make a potentially puzzling statement: all those pirated copies are "essentially free marketing."
The studio's ingenious and sleek-looking puzzle game was considered one of 2014's best mobile titles, and Ustwo stated that, although the game topped 1 million in sales, its popularity went several orders of magnitude beyond that due to illegitimate copies.
The developer revealed that around 95 percent of Android installs and 60 percent of iOS ones were unpaid ones, which might lead some to think that piracy is running rampant and freemium is the only way to go on mobile platforms.
That, however, seems to be pretty far from the truth, as the studio acknowledges that pirates are unlikely to have purchased the product otherwise, which means that the huge number of illegitimate installs does not translate into lost revenue.
Also, the studio made it pretty clear that they were not complaining, just relaying interesting facts.
The game's producer, Dan Gray, confessed to expecting these figures to show up, and revealed the bright side of the whole affair: it's really good marketing.
"The majority of those users probably wouldn't have bought the game anyway. So it's not like we're losing revenue. And, of course, I'm sure some of those users have recommended the game to friends who maybe aren't as tech-savvy as they are. It's essentially free marketing," Gray said in an interview with Recode.
Many other mobile developers revealed unbelievably high rates of piracy on Android and iOS, and this is one of the reasons free-to-play games are the dominant life form on the two ecosystems.
