It was just two days ago that Dead Trigger developers, Madfinger dropped the price on their Android app from $0.99 to free. Up until right now, the price drop appeared almost to good to be true, as we couldn’t discover any clear reason for the drop. So what did cause the developers from Mad Finger to make such a sudden move?

While the news has been met with some opposition from those who paid the $0.99 price tag for the game early on in its release, Mad Fingers released a brutally honest statement that tells us exactly why they made their pricing decision:

“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. – It was much less than 8$ for SHADOWGUN but on the other hand we didn’t dare to provide it for free, since we hadn’t got XP with free-to-play format so far. – However, even for one buck, the piracy rate is soooo giant, that we finally decided to provide DEAD TRIGGER for free. Anyway – 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,” Madfinger Games explained.

The question we ask now is, how will Dead Trigger produce the same kind of revenue it would have had the price remained the same? Will Mad Finger rely on in-app purchases for revenue, move to an ad-support model or something else entirely?

The real problem is the kind of black-eye this is for Android gaming at large, especially as more and more developers begin to aggressively launch apps and games on the Android platform.

Grab Dead Trigger for free on Google Play.

Slashgear