Phandroid just posted an article where the developers of the Infinity Blade title for iOS and the upcoming sequel, Infinity Blade 2, talk about Android and why the series won’t come to Android, at least for now citing piracy issues as the only real reason. While piracy happens everywhere, we believe there is more to this than simple piracy concerns.
Call it a conspiracy theory if you will but it’s a damn good one that holds a lot of weight to it. The original interview was with Chair Entertainment, the developers of Infinity Blade 1 and 2, with Mashable where the main reason for not bringing the series over to Android was due to it’s “wild west” nature and piracy issues. While piracy is a concern, it’s something that everyone has been dealing with for years now in all forms of digital entertainment whether it’s movies, music, PC games and now mobile games.
Madfinger Games cited that only 1% of all copies of Shadowgun were actually purchased in China. Well as much as that sucks, that’s China and not the entire world and condemning the entire world due to the statistics of one nation isn’t fair. Part of the problem is the media itself which has a tendency to make click bait articles when it comes to piracy on Android. Same goes with the whole malware nonsense that is always sensationalized in the media.
While it may be slightly harder to pirate on iOS, it’s still possible by jailbreaking your phone. Hell there is even a store, Installous, dedicated to pirated apps for iOS for jailbroken devices. When it comes to piracy numbers, due to Android’s openness, sure they are going to be higher but there are plenty of measures to counter-act this. A prime example is when Polarbit first released Reckless Racing.
Due to the amount of piracy that game was having problems with, it was overloading the servers. So Polarbit came up with a solution that checked to make sure the copy you were running was paid for otherwise you wouldn’t have access to any multiplayer functions or updates. Similar solutions can be developed for non-multiplayer games as well.
Another reason we think that the whole piracy issue that Chair Entertainment is spouting is nonsense is due to the fact that if piracy was so blatantly rampant do you really think other companies like Rockstar Games would be releasing GTA III or Max Payne on Android? Of course not. But Chair Entertainment gives us a little false hope after they mention that Google has been a bit lax in combating piracy, which is true, by saying:
We’re confident that will be worked out and it will become a viable place for game developers, but that hasn’t happened yet. So it’s not the tech, it’s the business platform.
Let me now throw the reason I believe that the piracy issue, while somewhat a legitimate concern for developers of course, is nonsense for major studios like Chair Entertainment. This is where the conspiracy theory comes into play so be warned. Apple needs a title, or series, that will showcase what their devices are capable of doing. First it was the Epic Citadel demo which was later shown running on an Android tablet so that got squashed. Now they have Infinity Blade 1 and 2 and they don’t want to lose that. Why do I say this?
During the iPhone 4S event the only game they decided to show off was Infinity Blade 2. It’s a massive draw for iOS and Apple knows it just as Apple knows that it could easily run on Android devices as they are now. I’m not even talking quad-core devices either. Infinity Blade is the one thing they have left and I’m sure there are some behind the scenes agreements between Apple and Chair Entertainment to keep it that way, for now at least.
If someone from Chair Entertainment happens to read this, I encourage them to get in touch with us and we would be more than happy to sit down and really talk about what’s going on. Otherwise, the issue of piracy stopping Infinity Blade from coming to Android holds little weight when companies like Rockstar Games are coming on board. Feel free to check out the article over at Phandroid as well for more information and less ranting by me.
So what are your thoughts on this? Time to voice your opinions!
