There is another thread that touches upon concerns over isApplicationGenuine.
It has been mentioned that the Apple reviewers do not associate the proper encryption to the game until after approval, which would cause this property to return false, therefore making the game unplayable to the reviewers.
I find this unlikely as it seems to work fine with ad hoc builds, not to mention it would be a huge oversight to implement a feature that would cause an app to not get approved.
Can the Unity Team confirm or deny these concerns ASAP so that those of us who just submitted apps can resubmit before losing more time and those about to submit can make changes (if necessary)?
I’m a little confused then…isn’t the point of piracy detection to disable unauthorized users from playing it? And even if we didn’t knock out all functionality, a large part of it must be restricted otherwise a piracy check is useless.
Secondly, an answer would not require testifying to how Apple’s review process works. For example, if you tested this property out when submitting Penelope, which made it into the App Store, then you could indicate that in your experience, using the property has not been problematic during submissions.
I assume that you have tested this end-to-end, perhaps with Penelope. What were the results? I’m not expecting you to speak on Apple’s process or represent everyone’s submissions.
Otherwise you seek to find ways to make them paying customers instead.
Even microsoft realized that after fighting for half a decade and started to integrate the special windows license offer into non geniune windows that bypassed the activation lock.
Never forget: A pirate is a potential customer, not a lost customer.
But a pissed pirate definitely is a lost customer.
Not all have the music label funding backend to compensate for “stupid decisions” as in “disable an app and lose a potential sale”
Think of the opportunities for promotion, mayhem, hilarity and offense.
You could mix it with admob, and fill the app with ads (monetizing the pirates). If you’re quite experienced in the ol’ iphone game, you could pre-sell your own custom advertising to targeted industries (ie, “I have 35,000 UDID’s here that I can confirm have pirated the app, and thus, have been spammed with your ad”)
Done properly, that advertising revenue/contract could pay for the app’s base cost anyway
That’s one idea of many
Mayhem - If you’re making a car racing game… pirated copies only get 3 wheels on a car rather than 4.
Hilarity - The app changes all their address book numbers into $5 per-minute sex lines (this works especially well if you own said phone numbers).
@dreamora:
I’m not fully understanding what you’re saying. It appears that you’re saying using piracy checks hurts sales. I’m not sure how doing the check loses me money if it only effects the person who wasn’t going to pay to begin with. We can see how the piracy fiasco in music turned out, but it’s a different beast. Would love to see actual reports on this, if any. I may have misunderstood you, so in the likelihood I’m being dense, I asked a co-worker to read the response. Turns out he and I are both dense.
saw your edits, understand what you’re saying now. thanks *
@JTBentley:
The app has to be paid, so we can’t run ads in good conscience.
I do like your address book idea though
Well, you wouldn’t put in ads if its a genuine user…
What dremora was saying was that a pirate is still a potential customer, if you piss them off, they’ll do nothing but burn you. Instead, you should find other ways to monetize them.
Microsoft’s biggest competitor isn’t Apple, isn’t linux, ibm… Its Microsoft. 80% of the world uses windows, 40% of those is pirated. MS have over 10,000 patents, and basically make money just off the install base, let alone actual sales, etc
For example, if you’re selling a MMOG on the iphone, for $9.99 … Plus a $2 a month subscription, you still want the pirates to pay the $2 even if they haven’t bought the app… Then, you patch often so your app has to be cracked time and time again otherwise they can’t play online, eventually, they’ll cave and pay the $9.99…
Pirated music, MMOG, subscription services and apps with in-app purchases or click-through purchases can benefit from the pirated distribution, because the more eyeballs, the more they can sell associated products. If I did an app with in-app purchases, no way would I put in piracy detection. But if there is no upsell, I’m not sure how it would ultimately hurt sales of this particular app. Maybe bad publicity? In that case, a pirate can buy the game and leave me a bad review about me expecting to get paid for my efforts Truth be told, we’re not that worried about piracy and have not done a check for it on any of our titles except this one. For this game, we’re doing it in partnership with another company that wants it in.
