Well, @Jayenkai , I've always supported you in the past. And I warned you focusing on piracy would turn you into something untenable.

Point one : I'm NOT focussed on the "Piracy"
I'm focussed on the twat that took my game, and uploaded it to Amazon, then tried to make a profit from it.
That, to me, is a million times worse than anyone who simply finds the game online and downloads it.
That's not just taking something, that's taking something then trying to profit from someone else's hard work.
That's not just regular piracy. It's a WHOLE other thing..

For what it's worth, when SpikeDislike2 first came out, and the pirates took hold of the .ipa Apple version, I created a brand new "Pirate Themed" stage.
My intention was to only have it show up if the player had pirated their copy of the game.
The plan was simple, I upload a new edition of the game, find the source of the pirated version, and get them to inject the new theme before they upload it.
The pirate wouldn't respond to my attempts at communication, and the whole thing was abandoned..

.. But like I say.. Pirates I don't mind. I've got 340+ games, here, and I can GUARANTEE they're in places I could never imagine.
Seeing that Amazon Store item filled me with rage. And I'm 100% sure you'd feel the same way, too.

Your plan to punish your customers (however few) with ads because piracy exists only proves my point, @Jayenkai . I can't support that.

I don't plan to "punish my customers". I plan to punish myself for not having crammed all 340+ of my games with adverts any earlier.
I've always had a "No Adverts" rule, and I've followed it religeously, even when all the warning signs were to switch to things other than direct sales.
The AppStore and GooglePlay have been flagging this up for years, and I should've been the standard sheep and followed suit.
But I didn't.

I stuck to my guns, and look where it's gotten me.

I'm now having to do this, because, realistically I can't think of a better way to handle it.
It's obvious that having a paid-game on Android is insanity. Theft is rampant.
It's a no-go area, and I'm not alone in thinking this.
Android's many issues are the reason that Mobile Devs have almost exclusively switched to F2P-Evils.


I could do IAP stuff, but I don't trust my devkit to be able to re-unlock your IAP after you've formatted your Android device..
(Android owners tend to do this more often, what with all the different OS editions, and I'm NOT willing to play "fix my version" every few days)

So, realistically, IAP is not an option for me, because of fragmentation and accounts and more.
I am only one guy, and I have over 300 games to keep tabs on. IAP is out of the question.

The only (literally the ONLY) option I have left is Adverts, so yesterday I did just that.

I devised a nice simple ad method which took the entire game, pushed it down the screen a bit, and left a banner-space at the top.
This was done so that the adverts weren't annoying or intrusive, and when I tested it all seemed good.
Unfortunately, it seems that some people's devices weren't quite up to the challenge, and the Adverts were causing the entire smegging game to slow down.
As such, I've now had to reduce the adverts to "only in the main menu", where they're certainly not going to make up for loss of sales. Grrr..

Other Tweeters have suggested a "Fullscreen advert every 5 or 10 rounds", and I can honestly say that that's NOT going to happen!!!

I'm adding adverts for reasons other than profit..
Hopefully, the Main Menu Banner will do the required task.

The fact that it's locked in to MY Admob account should hopefully put off anyone who wants to do that stupid "Upload it to Amazon" bullshit.
Pirates can still grab it, and in fact so can anyone now.

The game has been set free because I've added a little advert.
I'll be watching and comparing iOS sales against Android Ads, and if it turns out to be worthwhile, I'll probably do a similar Ad-Supported edition on iOS, too.

I'm very annoyed at Android, Google, and this whole experience..
(Don't forget that the price for all this theft, is having my actual home address plastered on GooglePlay.. Which is a WHOLE other issue...)
I'm not happy that I've had to add the Ads. I HATE that I've added Ads, and this entire experiences is one of the most downheartening things that I've come across whilst coding.
I'm pissed off, I'm frustrated, and I'm still very very angry.

And, @Jayenkai, your suggestion that people who want your games should move to Apple? I wouldn't even do that for Minter.

For what it's worth, I suggested people "Buy an iPod", not "Move to Apple"...
And iPod Touch isn't an expensive iPhone. Think of it like a Gameboy or a 3DS. It's a handheld gaming platform, and it's full of the wonders of iOS.
If I load up SpikeDislike3 on my iPod Touch (5th Gen) I get to experience it in a silky smooth way.
My own PC can't handle the game like my iPod can.
Switching to the iPad makes the whole experience even more unbelievable, as the tablet throws giant 512x512 HD sprites around the screen as if they were 8x8 tiles.
(and yes, there are giant 512x512 sprites all over the game!!)

The whole experience, on a good device, makes it all worthwhile, and as much as I could say "Get a good Android device", that's not exactly easy.
Each device has good points and bad points, and buying a new phone can be a total pain in the arse!
Instead, I'm suggesting an iPod Touch, because it's fairly cheap (in comparison to the iPhone it's a feckin' bargain!) and it's a nice little portable device.

I've also had to downgrade the Android experience somewhat, because smaller hi-res devices were trying to load hi-res assets into a small amount of memory.
The Nexus7 2012-edition did this, and failed spectacularly.
It's hard to know what will/won't work on each device (Fragmentation, again) so I instead settled for the lowest common denominator, and relied on pixel-scaling instead of the hi-res assets.
For the most part, that's not really noticable, but once you hit the Invisible Munky levels, you can definitely see it!!

There's still another thing that makes the iOS edition a "little" bit better.
GameCenter works wonderfully, especially when you count the Highscore tables for each of the Infinity levels.
The Android edition is the second best, because GameCenter adds so much more to the game (and this is in fact true for ALL my highscore-based games)

If I could make use of the Android Play thingumy, that'd be nice, but I'm not sure how to do that in Monkey. I simply *haven't had the time to look into it.
If anyone would like to give advice on that, feel free.

Meanwhile, settle for the second best Android version, and since it has adverts you don't need to pay for it, and hopefully I don't need to keep getting pissed off about people uploading the bloody thing onto other sales platforms, now that those adverts are in place.
*gah*

.. Now, I just need to figure out why the hell Socoder isn't working..