A way to stop jailbreakers!!!

Already been done recently by Venan with Space Miner Blast.

 

thats not the only game...theres tons, it works, but to an extent. Do it right, and it works, if you rip people off, then it will not work

 

There is nothing wrong with jail breaking. Cracking and pirating, yes.

Any game worth playing will be pirated, unfortunately.

I'm guessing if the IAP method is widely adapted, it'll be broke by someone.

 

Wrong. The piracy rate is closer to 90%, not 50%.

The majority of in app purchases are just extra files, EG more levels. All you have to do is add the in-app purchase files to the game and your good (I would assume, it might be more complex than that).

The free charts are vastly more competitive than the paid charts, sometimes 10-20 times more competitive.

Only for people who install a very specific hack that it is required to pirate apps but can be used without pirating anything (a requires b but b doesn't need a).

Your title is off as well; you don't want to stop jailbreakers, you want to stop pirates.

I hate piracy as much as anyone. It's stealing, plain and simple, and it hurts the developers and the legitimate players. I don't condone it and wish it could be stopped, but that's not possible.

I hope this doesn't come across as offensive. I'm not attacking you, I'm disagreeing with your post.

 

HUH?

I thought freemium was a good way to combat it?
Other people say and think so.

Its like Illuminati control of the planet too which is kind of similar to piracy.
People are always thinking how to break the control in their personal lives to become more invisible and more wealthy.

 

Freemium /IAP -can- be a good way to combat it but it really depends on how you go about doing it. If all your IAP is doing is transferring over some files or unlocking files that are already on the device then it can definitely be hacked / pirated.

If the game is keeping some or all of the game data on a remote server then it becomes harder to hack. Note that I said harder, not impossible as even with this approach it all depends on how things are implemented and some methods are more secure than others.

Even with a well thought out secure implementation everything can be hacked given enough time / energy / motivation but you can at least make it difficult enough that it's not really worth the effort.

 

Wrong. That would mean that 90% of iDevice users are jailbroken, which is not the case. Not even close.

 

Wrong. That would mean that 90% of iDevice users are jailbroken, which is not the case. Not even close.

Piracy for me is a fact of life. I know I will have a certain number of copies of my games pirated. Frankly, I don't worry about it.

 

You are right to point out that it arguably doesn't matter but your logic is wrong.

Even with only 5%-10% of devices jailbroken people do see 90% piracy rates for the first few days. This is because the pirates seem to have a great distribution system. Presumably there are a hard core of pirates who download packs of the last few days worth of games and run them all exactly once. It really doesn't matter, these are weird, dead eyed collectors and not potential customers. They never get to appreciate anything and certainly don't play iOS games.

real piracy rates (of people who are playing your game) are closer to 50%.

In times like these where Jailbreaking is difficult you can almost view Jailbreakers as free advertising. Think about it: Some enthusiastic kid walking around school showing of his pirated apps to other kids who can't be bothered with the pain of tethered Jailbreaks or have devices to new to be easily hacked.

 

Doesn't work all times

Yea but adding in-app purchases makes people not wanna buy your app. They just complain & give bad ratings & the app sinks down low.

 

Sadly, the fact of the matter is, IAP can be added into the pirated app and the pirater can get them.

 

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90% pirated downloads for a few days, even if true, does not a 90% overall piracy rate make. The statement to which I replied to:

"Wrong. The piracy rate is closer to 90%, not 50%."

is false, as you just demonstrated Love your game btw

For anyone trying to thwart piracy, I applaud the effort. In my opinion, however, if Adobe can't keep people from pirating their most expensive products, someone like me has little chance of making a dent in the system. Most people who steal my game for the iDevices wouldn't buy it anyways. So like GlennX says, I just chalk it up to a free advertisement and forget it.

The movie, music, and software industries are all vulnerable to piracy. Until some great solution comes along you can either try and fight it, or just live with it. I choose the latter.

I will admit though that I got pissed off once when, after Googling "Daredevil Dave", I found a warez site offering my game. The thing that pissed me off....on the message board were two people arguing that the other had stolen their pirated copy from their site site and was offering it up on their own. I actually tried to register to the site so I could comment "Hey you a**holes BOTH stole the game from ME! WTF?", but the registration failed. I just took a deep breath and moved on.

 

#1. IAPs automatically get lower ratings from most people
#2. Yes you can pirate IAPs
You should study more about iDevice programming before going into game designing seeing as you still lack a lot of knowledge.

 

Yeah, it doesn't stop pirates. However, it does help a little. I mean, IAP games are a way to stop SOME pirates, but nothing can ever stop all of them.

Anyway, I hate it when I show a jailbroken device to friends and they immediately accuse me that it's illegal and I should be ashamed of pirating apps. I mean, all I ever use it is for theming.

 

I am pirate by myself. Hate me, burn me (do whatever you want with me in this thread).But i give you a clue. What about anti-crack softwaring the app (for example Perfect Cell by mobigames(and Edge)) Anyone who tries to run the cracked version gets an error. Theres no way to stop crackers cracking apps(and `fixing` anti crack soft issues). But its just an idea.

 

True, I was just pointing out that even if only a tiny minority are jailbroken they can account for the vast majority of your downloads, which of course didn't have much to do with your point

I have a Google Alert set up for "iPhone Ground Effect" and once a week or so I get alerted that the pirate version of GE1.0 is available somewhere new.

The buggy original version seems to be far more available than either of the updates which is slightly irritating.

 

Actually.. here is a funny story... Years ago I worked with a company that shall remain nameless, but what they did was incredibly smart in a sense..

Now we all know that most crackers are in it for the "fame" or being the first to put something out... We know that the majority of pirates are looking for the latest game, and for the most part won't play through the game fully anyhow. Most just collect things..

So what company <x> did was they pirated their own software, made it so you could play the game though about 50%, then it would crash or have problems...

What did this do? Well by putting their game out on the pirate forums first they provided a zero day warez, and most guys that cracked software wouldn't try cracking it because it was already available. Most pirates downloaded it, but never played far enough to get to the "issue" point. Those that generally did would have to end up buying it because there was no other way to finish the game because at that point the game had been out for months.

It was an interesting tactic. I have no idea if anyone has done this on the iDevices..

 

Just so this rings through:

A pirated copy does NOT equal a lost sale.

Furthermore, IAPs combat most of the piracy stuff, but you can guarantee if someone wants the apps, they'll get it, especially if it's popular enough. And if they know what they're doing. IAPs are enough to stop a good majority of piraters though.