There’s a lot of high-profile games either out or coming soon for Android, but even the staunchest Android evangelist (this guy!) would have trouble denying that the gaming market on iOS is more robust at the moment. The current posterboy for iOS graphics is Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade, a hack-and slash action game with some undeniably incredible visuals. When asked when they’d bring the series to the even more popular Android platform, the devs cited fears of piracy as a reason not to create ports.

Mashable asked the two brothers who designed the game why it hasn’t appeared on high-powered Tegra devices yet, and their response was that a “wild west” business environment had left the door wide open for piracy. “We’re confident that will be worked out and it will become a viable place for game developers, but that hasn’t happened yet.” The developers said they were open to creating Android games in the future, but at the moment it’s not part of their plans.

It’s true that piracy is a problem for Android. Most apps sold in the Android Market don’t have any sort of copy protection (and I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing). But to develop exclusively for iOS out of a fear of piracy is a flawed argument to say the least – piracy is also a problem on iOS, and a quick Google search shows that Infinity Blade is available to any unscrupulous iPhone users who wish to take it without paying. There’s a lot of good reasons not to port a game, like extra development cost for a platform that typically renders fewer direct sales. Piracy isn’t necessarily one of them.

For the record: do not download commercial software without paying for it, on any platform. It’s illegal just about everywhere, and you’ll make Santa cry.

[via Phandroid]

16 COMMENTS

  1. Haa.. What a cop-out. When I first heard of the original iPhone’s growing popularity among my acquaintances, the excitement was almost always related to being able to get “free registered software”. I later found out that they were referring to Cydia and it’s potential in enabling a full app store full of pirated iOS apps.

    I’ve yet to hear a fellow Android (or other WP7 and Blackberry, former WM, Symbian phone owners) claim the same thing about why they chose their platform of choice.

  2. haha i bet his infinity blade gonna get released online before it even hits the appstore
    these little bitches need to grow up.
    piracy is everything android IOS BLAH BLAH

  3. Someone needs to explain to them that they should be more concerned with the people who will pay them for their product and not the ones who won’t.

  4. LOL. I have 6 friends that owns either an ipad/ipod touch/iphone. all of them are jailbroken and do not pay for the apps they have. Piracy is iOS’ problems too.

  5. I think its because, it is easier to install apps for free on an android phone instead of having to go through the hassle of jailbreaking and iphone. I can bet that the Piracy on android is a lot more than on ios!

  6. Ironically enough, having the iPhone jailbroken in no less than 20 minutes I installed infinity blade for free right away on the ios.  There will always be workarounds, is pirating right? No?  Is it a valid reason not to port over a game that could make you even more money, again, no.  The reason simply is because Apple has contracted with the developer to pitch it’s OS as a more robust app market.  And yes there are people out there buying the iphone so they can do things like play IB.  So it makes sense to pay the developers whatever costs they would have received in return for an iphone contract which costs no less than $2,500 per year.  The net profit is then only a mere $2,490.  Seems like a smart move to me, but why not just own up to it?

      • not just infity blade
        you as an android user is reputed to be begging every game released
        first or exclusive for ios
        i’m a iso developer and and you do not make the slightest idea of the amount of games that never will come to this crap android platform

      • Oh man, I’m so jealous, I spend all my time playing phone games.because I can’t afford real games LOL

  7. just android users are right now on pirate bay pirating “ios apps” because they were almost forced to buy the cheapest ipod touch to play ios exclusive games after getting tired of begging for a android version! 90% on ios app store are paying apple fanboys and 10% are frustated android users that bought an ipod touch to pirate ios apps.

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