Well only Madfinger really knows for certain, but there is something interesting going on that might explain some of this. It seems that Madfinger has gotten themselves caught in the sights of a patent troll by the name of Uniloc.  Uniloc has made the claim that Madfinger (and a list of others) are infringing on one of their patents that relates to licensing verification systems on Android phones only. The patent number in question is 6,587,067 and could be worth quite a bit of money if the defendants lose their case in court. Now the question is, what title is Uniloc going after from Madfinger? If it is or was the $0.99 Dead Trigger then the best thing to do is quickly remove the license validation and make the game free to all.

To give yourself a nice little PR spin on the issue you blame rampant piracy as the reason (just in case any of your other games are being looked at) and hope for the best. We are hoping to get a copy of the complaint to confirm which game(s) are in question. According to information on the suits against EA and others Uniloc is not going after their entire portfolio, but has specified certain titles that are using infringing code.

As for the piracy angle, well we poked around and while we saw more than a few download links they all pointed to the Android Store and not to a hacked .apk file. So unless the gang at Madfinger know something else that we are not able to see (which would be concerning) I am not sure where they are getting their piracy numbers from. I would be interested in seeing their raw data on this considering that it is a $0.99 game.  Is it possible that the game is being pirated? Of course it is as there are some people that will pirate anything they can. Is it likely? Well, that is another story. We actually have a feeling that Madfinger is more concerned about the legal position they are in than losing out on a dollar. Madfinger has made quite a showing of their drop in price due to piracy and has emphatically stated that they will not turn this into a freemium game. The problem is that some think it already is or is quickly heading there with how long it takes to acquire items. This slow development model is exactly what you see in most freemium games and could be an indicator that Madfinger will move in that direction in the future.
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