Wasn't that a reaction to users who refused to pay for games and just sideloaded them instead?
I can remember there being five dollar games in the early days of iOS that sold well. I can also remember developers trying games that had ads until you paid to remove them.
If a game gets content updates every other month, re-downloading a pirated game, and possibly losing all progress, meh.
If a game is going to go on sale for $20 (or $10) after awhile, why bother pirating it, just wait.
And Steam is absurdly convenient. Built in voice chat, collectables, and forums, means playing games on Steam is better than playing pirated games.
Steam is a DRM platform.
Ever hear of DRM? How about consoles that brick themselves if they detect that they've been modified?
In which case, we’d still expect PCs to be in an equivalent, if not worse state.
No. That was a minuscule number of people.
It was a reaction to Candy Crush making insane amounts of money using casino mechanics.
I can certainly remember developers of early popular games that you paid for up front saying that they tracked how many copies of their game were out there, and only a minuscule percentage of those games had been paid for,
I don't think piracy is the issue here, the issue is on mobile devices you already have quick payments setup for very fast transactions through the app stores. It's easier to assume to assume the person using the phone authorized to make the transaction and enable lots of small transactions.
On PC it's much easier to enter my card details for each new transaction, so i never save the card in Steam etc. Doing the same on the phone is tiring, so i have my card saved.
Apple and Google also make a little money on these transactions and have less incentive to promote non freemium games.
My impression at the time was that the supply of games in the app store was just too great, with hundreds of casual games being released every day. Thus driving down prices.
And Apple was more than happy to commoditise their complement; if 20 developers decided to clone Flappy Bird that was fine with Apple.
People were willing to pay up front on iOS, but Android users just sideloaded, leading to Skinner box free-to-play games being the most reliable way to monetize.
Sideloading makes piracy a service problem instead of a freedom one, and Apple knows their service can't compete on an unstacked deck.
