Pirates Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Battle Dungeon goes offline due to piracy

by Mike Schramm (Dec 4th, 2012)

Battle Dungeon is a tactical strategy multiplayer game for iOS that arrived on the App Store about a week ago, but it's no longer there. The developer announced on its website that it has pulled the game from the store due to piracy. The US$4.99 game (also supported by in-app purchases) ...

Dictionary apps try to shame supposed pirates, plan backfires

by Mike Schramm (Nov 13th, 2012)

A series of Dictionary apps recently took an, um, "innovative" path to fighting software piracy, though it didn't quite work out as expected. Enfour is the developer of quite a few dictionary-style apps on the store, and it recently implemented an anti-piracy system that hijacked the pirate's ...

Catan app adds Seafarers expansion with in-app purchase

by Mike Schramm (Jan 20th, 2011)

The great Catan iOS game has added in its first expansion, available via an in-app purchase, and it's based on the Seafarers of Catan expansion from the original German board game. The expansion introduces ships and shipping routes to the kingdom-building simulation, and it includes 10 different ...

360iDev: Saurik on the mobile application market

by Mike Schramm (Apr 13th, 2010)

Jay "Saurik" Freeman took the stage here at 360iDev last night to explain the mobile application marketplace. The entire mobile application marketplace, that is. Most people wrongly perceive the App Store to be a simple user-and-developer relationship, but in reality, it's a much more complicated ...

Pirates make away with $450 million in App Store booty?

by Chris Rawson (Jan 13th, 2010)

24/7WallSt. reports that Apple and third-party developers have lost approximately $450 million in revenue from App Store piracy since the store opened in July of 2008. Out of this, $140 million of this counts as lost revenue for Apple – a huge chunk of the $500 - $700 million in revenue the ...

An app with everything but sales

by Mike Schramm (Dec 17th, 2009)

TriplePoint PR's site has a post on their blog about Orbital [iTunes Link], an iPhone game released a while back that I presume is one of their clients. Obviously, they've done their job: we're talking about the game, which is $.99US or available in a lite free version [iTunes Link]. But they've ...

iCombat's stats on app pirates

by Mike Schramm (May 15th, 2009)

Miguel Sanchez-Grice, creator of the iCombat app (a remake of the old Atari game), sent us these stats on piracy of his app after writing a blog post about the same thing, and I find them fascinating. Instead of building DRM into his app, he just detected if the player was using a copy that wasn't ...

TUAW wishes you a happy ITLAPD

by Steven Sande (Sep 19th, 2008)

Yarrrrrr. The TUAW crew wishes ye a happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The goal o' this holiday be fer ye t' talk like a swashbuckler. Nay that 't has anythin' t' do wi' Apple products, but 'tis fun. We will nay take responsibility if ye decide t' pillage an' burn a port, nor if ye drink ...

Feral to bring Sid Meier's Pirates! to the Mac

by Mat Lu (Aug 1st, 2008)

Sid Meier's Pirates! was one of my favorite games of all time. Another legendary game from the mastermind behind Civilization, it first came out for the C64 way back in 1987 (with ports to both the Apple II and Mac). Then in 2004, it was remade for the PC and later ported to the (original) Xbox and ...

Apple Games profiles Sid Meier

by Mike Schramm (May 20th, 2008)

Apple Games has posted an article about one of my favorite game developers, the great Sid Meier, designer of Pirates! and probably the best game ever made, Civilization (although in my humble opinion, Alpha Centauri is the best Civ, but I digress). There are quite a few good anecdotes in there, ...

Pirates Online goes live on Mac

by Mike Schramm (Nov 1st, 2007)

I heard a few times that Disney's new casual MMO Pirates of the Caribbean Online went live yesterday, but MacWorld reminds us that it's out for both Windows and Mac. Metacritic doesn't have too many reviews up as of this writing, but our friends at Joystiq found it to be a fun, easy to get into ...

Pirate up your Mac with Jobby Roger

by Scott McNulty (Oct 26th, 2006)

What do you get for the Mac portable user who has everything? Why, a sticker from Jobby Roger of course. This $4 sticker (that includes shipping in the US, International orders cost $5) instantly transforms any MacBook, iBook, MacBook Pro, or PowerBook into a laptop that Blackbeard would be glad to ...