hi fellow iphone devs, out of no particular reason (but maybe inspired by the upcoming submission of our new game) i felt like browsing through some code legitimacy-checking source today. i found two code examples, one checking for inconclusive modification dates and one for the validity of the encryption of the app. we found Radio Flare on bittorent sites the day it was released but never bothered. but services like OpenFeint that charge developers per user make it an issue. that made me wonder: did anyone of you have any experience with illegitimate copies? did anyone include code like the above into his app? what are your experiences?
@matinpi I had some other example (http://thwart-ipa-cracks.blogspot.com/2008/11/detection.html) Ohhh you raise an important issue that I never though of it before. Indeed what happen if for example you implement OpenFeint in your game or other similar package that charge you per users. If you got 90% of the user online using illegitimate copy this could become a serious issue. Maybe OpenFeint already their own way to find out if it s running on a crack version? You could contact them and ask (I know Jason Citron often come around here), but you should also on your side think about a way to disable online feature if you notice it is a crack version.
Look, I can somewhat understand some unscrupulous people pirating $60 games from big name studios that they don't think are worth the cash/in a genre they don't care for. But why the hell would anyone pirate $1-$5 games from small independent dev teams barely trying to make ends meet.
LoL, are you kidding? Because people don't care. For example, search using Google for the game my two man developer just released 'iSR iPhone' http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS309US309&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=iSR+iPhone More than half of the links on the front page alone are for pirate sites with links to the game. So rather than paying .99 cents for something the two of us worked on for four months they can have it for free.. Apple needs to introduce UDID verification at the base level since they won't let anyone do it in their apps. Until then there's not much that can be done from people helping themselves to whatever they want. Adding to the problem are popular App sites giving people the keys to the castle by offering open forums where people can discuss 'jailbreaking' their phones. The market is very much in its infancy, the problems we see today are the growing pains. Surely someday things will get better.
Although most forums have jailbreaking sections of their forums, most of them don't allow talking or discussing piracy and will warn users that do or ban them if they provide links or how tos
lol...piracy and jailbreaking are two completely different things. I haven't jailbroken my iPhone, but I don't see anything wrong with people that want to do so. Piracy on the other hand is essentially stealing someone's work.
Yep but jailbreaking facilitate piracy. A pirate is definitely jailbroken but not all jailbroken users are pirate.
Obviously the two are not synonymous. Though the ratio of those who do, to those who have, would suggest it's a slippery slope.
Whatever stops the tears... Ehh, I find it annoying that people pirate games. I don't even really want to jailbrake my iPhone...
Not all pirates have jailbroken iDevices actually. I know of sites that allow you to download .ipa's straight onto your desktop, then drag and drop into iTunes. No jailbreaking required. There's tons of ways to get apps for free, and it's pretty easy, which is why it's appealing to so many.
You have to have a patched mobile installation file to run those .ipa files though. The only way I know of to get a patched mobile installation is to jailbreak and install it through cydia. That or SSH in and swap it out manually. Either way you have to be jailbroken though.
> You have to have a patched mobile installation file to run those .ipa files > though This is good to know - I *think* this would limit the people who would actually be able to use the pirated version to a fairly small percentage of the iPhone target market ( pirates, techies, and some other developers who maybe had a reason to jailbreak for dev purposes ) - who probably wouldn't be a major source of income anyways for any app developer. The thing I really like about the iPhone is that, if you have one ( and they ain't cheap ), and you've bought a few tunes / apps since getting one, you would probably prioritise spending a few dollars over potentially losing all of your previous purchases by trying to jailbreak or take the risk of modifying your iPhone in any non-official way. I know lots of people on other phones who have never spent a penny on new software, but with iPhone users, the average monthly spend seems to easily be in the 10s of dollars / pounds every month. Mal
You cant stop piracy. Design a new software to protect your app, in couple of weeks there is a crack for it already. Its a battle between crackers/developers, and this is what makes it so interesting. But there will NEVER be a 100% safe protection software.
Exactly right, they will always find a way. Interestingly pinchmedia tracking now lists how many jailbroken phones your app is running on and how many users are using a cracked version! No idea how they do it or how accurate it is.
Only the smart pirates are able to bypass protection. The others (the majority) rely on them to fix apps for them, and it's usually masses of 15 year old kids who don't have the money to buy apps unless they use their parent's credit cards. Adding any sort of protection will deter some pirates, because a lot of people don't know what to do with an app that can detect piracy. The rest look towards a fix, while every update of the app makes a new problem for them. Plus, serverside protection is useful for online games/apps. Adding protection does help in the long run, especially on the less popular apps. The bigger apps will always be cracked in the end, unfortunately.
People who pirate apps are probably not valid customers in the first place. Even if the pirated version isn't available, I doubt they'll buy an actual copy. Better to focus on your main customers rather than worrying about the rest.
Sure, we've been using it for quite a while now and have found it to be VERY useful and interesting! Check out our blog for some lessons learned from using pinchmedia tracking.
I couldn't agree more. Unless they are distributing it (illegally) in a very obvious place that your customers will easily find it and be influenced to pirate instead of purchase. In which case cease-and-desist. That's about all you can do, I'm afraid!
To get back to an earlier point, should online places like Openfeint and similar use these, give you (as a dev) a guarantee they will use your chosen serverside authentication? It will cost you money if they do not.
