GetJar to give mobile games away to millions of users for free
Mobile app store operator GetJar plans to shake up the mobile game industry by giving away millions of copies of mobile games for free. That's going to make it tough on companies that are trying to sell high-quality mobile games …
Context & Ripple Effects
GetJar is turning the app store itself into a marketing weapon: rather than taking a cut of each sale, it plans to give away millions of copies of mobile games, betting that scale and attention beat per-download revenue. The move lands three years after The Guardian asked whether there was such a thing as a free download in mobile at all — a question carriers and publishers then answered with walled gardens and per-title pricing.
The timing matters because premium publishers were just expanding their footprint: EA had only weeks earlier signaled it would throw its weight behind Android, extending the paid-game model to Google's platform. A distributor now offering those same titles away for free puts GetJar in direct tension with the publishers whose catalogues make its store worth visiting.
First-order effects
- Publishers selling premium mobile games face an immediate pricing dilemma: accepting GetJar's giveaway means trading download revenue for reach, or declining and ceding shelf space in a store that markets itself on free.
Second-order effects
- Rival storefronts and platforms are pushed toward their own promotional subsidies or ad-supported models to match the 'free' anchor, shifting competition from catalogue breadth to who absorbs the cost of each giveaway.
Third-order effects
- If giveaways become a standard acquisition tactic, mobile game monetization migrates structurally from upfront purchase prices to advertising and in-app revenue, with stores competing on user volume rather than transaction share.
The trend: Mobile game distribution is moving from pay-per-download storefront economics toward free-at-the-point-of-install models funded by ads and scale, with distributors like GetJar forcing the pace.