Muse.On-The.Net

The internet makes many things easier than ever before, including piracy of goods. The topic has been discussed widely when it comes to music or film, but what of mobile phone games?

In an infant industry where, by some estimates, less than 5% of mobile phone users have even attempted to download a game for their cellular handset, is piracy a big deal? Consider that many people cannot figure out how to download games legitimately - would these people steal games? Well, perhaps they would, if it was easier to do than purchasing games.

Consider the music industry. Before Apple’s iTunes/iPod combination, it was easier to download it via Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks than to purchase it. Music piracy continues, but music has largely remained shackled with Digital Rights Management (DRM) that limits the use of the purchased product. Whether piracy will diminish when DRM is remove is an experiment being tried today between Apple and EMI.

Piracy will always occur; rampant piracy occurs when consumer desire plus accessibility plus price/cost indignation outweigh the general populace’s moral fabric. Few people would take money from a lost wallet; empathic to the victim they will try to find contact information and return it. Finding $20 on the roadside - and knowing it would be hard to track down the owner - few people would hesitate to pocket it. Similarly, less people would report a bank error in their favor than would help a child return the correct change at a roadside lemonade stand. People know the cost to produce music is but a small portion of the cost to purchase it, and they are willing to rebel against “the man”.

The fair price for mobile phone games is certainly debatable. While today the marketplace is relatively small, the ubiquity of mobile phones means that one day, even with only 5% uptake, mobile phone games will be big business. Some companies are trying hard to upscale the price structure in order to build the business on firm financial foundations. This is hard to do when many developers are faltering and are ready to offer their games for less to make a sale. This is complicated by the many hands trying to secure their piece of the pie - developers, publishers, distributors, content licensors, and carriers. Today, prices range from $0 (ad-supported) to $20 for a single game. Clearly, moderate pricing structures encourage consumer purchases.

DRM solutions are viewed very negatively by consumers in the music industry. DRM solutions to date seem to punish purchasers while not addressing the music pirates at all. DRM solutions need to be so restrictive for mobile phones. Rather than prevent consumers from doing things, DRM should be used to control piracy or provide new sales/distribution channels. For example, Kalador provides PlayFirst and FreePlay technologies that allow consumers to try before they buy or to get free ad-supported games. These models work whether the games are re-distributed or not - in fact, sharing the content is a benefit to Kalador.

Something relatively unique about mobile phone games is the huge number of ports required to make a game work with the thousands of available handsets. This limits piracy in that it is difficult to effectively secure the right version of the game. Piracy is not so simple for mobile phone games!

One final concern for those seeking piracy - as with warez sites, you must be cautious - the game you receive may contain viruses or trojan horses that may damage your phone or end up charging you with spurious online data fees.

The fight against piracy is ongoing, but publishers tend to be realistic about it. While pirates are pursued using available legal means, their main concern is growing the global marketplace and piracy is generally viewed as a fringe activity that - while it can’t be ignored - isn’t going away soon.