Land of Droid 
So as we learnt in a post at the end of last week, MADFINGER’s hit game Dead Trigger became free in it’s most recent update. This came as quite a shock due to only being a few weeks after release. Players of the game such as myself, who downloaded the game prior to this update, are therefore obviously a little disgruntled… Even if the game was only £0.75.
Well today we learn that the reason for the sudden change in price was due to the severe amount of piracy of Android games:
Regarding price drop. HERE is our statement. The main reason: piracy rate on Android devices, that was unbelievably high. At first we intend to make this game available for as many people as possible – that’s why it was for as little as buck.
After reading this one thought came to mind: Why give the game for free if they were already losing money through piracy? Surely if they’d have kept the small £0.75 charge on the game they would still get legitimate downloads of the game and therefore still be making money? This is also likely to lead to an increase in claims that the game is a feeemium purchase due to the high number of in app purchases. Well don’t worry they’ve tried to quell these worries too:
DEAD TRIGGER is not FREEMIUM, it always was and still remains FREE-TO-PLAY, that means, all players are able to play it without IAP! We stand up for this statement, because all members of our team are playing (and enjoying) DEAD TRIGGER without IAP.
Although this information comes from a post on the game’s official Facebook page, we can clearly see that MADFINGER took the easy way out here. Perhaps there is more to it then what they are letting on?
Via Facebook
To be honest, the reason would more than likely be down to the fact that there download projections weren’t met purely down to the fact that a lot of people won’t pay for a game and then be nickel and dimed by in app purchases (even if they are not necessary).