Gameloft have never really played nice with the Android Market. Since the Market didn’t offer them DRM for their games, they kept their games to their own websites, which ended up making many potential buyers angry because they are not available in the market, and having little success against piracy, since all their games are already pirated. Does Gameloft hope Amazon can change this?
Amazon Appstore launched this week, and although it’s probbly the best competing store the Android Market will ever get, the launch didn’t go so well. First of all, it was announced at a very late hour for US citizens, second, it worked only for American buyers, even they didn’t even bother to mention this before. Many people from outside US tried the Amazon Appstore, but we terribly dissapointed that after so many steps to get to the store, they found out it wasn’t even working for them. One of the steps that I found most annoying was that it was asking for my credit card info, even for free apps (to utilize the 1-click payment thing). Speaking of which, MG Siegler from Techcrunch argued that he had issues with this 1-click thing too, because it was too easy to buy something by mistake.
I do think that going to the Amazon Appstore is a step forward for Gameloft from their own website, but I don’t know how this will help them, when Amazon’s DRM clearly breakable as well, but with much less potential to reach a wider audience, with the store working only in USA, at least for now.
