We have noticed that it’s quite common to get your games pirated on Android and Google says it’s quite common themselves as well. Google also says that you should see it as free advertising which i also agree with.
But what does (if any) unity do or what can be done to make it a bit harder for them?
I watched this http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers#p/u/32/TnSNCXR9fbY from Google and since I’m no
coder i wanted to know what is possible to do if one uses unity. My coders are kind of to busy with other stuff
at the moment so they haven’t had the time to look at this so any comments would be helpful.
I just don’t know if there is any amount of extra effort that is really worth it. Pirates can crack anything. If they wanna crack your game they will.
People fall into two categories.
People who buy games - Will not be effected if your game is cracked.
People who download pirated free games - With enough free stuff I doubt many of these people buy anything rather than a rare “must have” title that is not already cracked (which again, is rare since pirates will crack anything)
Just something to think about since all of your coders are busy
Unity supports what Google does to protect your apps. In the options for Android Player, there is a section for ‘Android Market Licensing (LVL)’. This is Googles solution. You can read more about it here: App Licensing | Android Developers
Well that part i thought was supported, i’m more talking about what they do in the video, ie obfuscating your code etc (i think that was the name for it)
iPhoneUtils.isApplicationGenuine works for Android I believe. (http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/iOS-Advanced.html) I ran into an issue where if I used it it would throw some stuff into my AndroidManifest.xml and show up as an extra permission the user had to agree to. Not sure if that puts you off by a few people told me they didn’t DL my app because of that.
Using that I suppose you could check to see if someone had pirated it and then only allow them to unlock a few levels before saying “Thanks for playing this pirated version!.. but go buy it now!”
I ran into another thread (that I can’t find now) that mentioned using a Get and Set method for any important values as well that did shifted the bits around so that if someone was watching values it wasn’t immediately obvious to them which value was what.
No more answers to this? Would be nice to see what people are actually doing to convert the pirated versions to paid etc as google mentions in the youtube clip.
There is an age old method to preventing pirating, It doesnt take any real great effort. To do this you need two things. A login. (which every user should have) and an IP address. (which every user should have)
If Mr. Right logs in to his account, uses his user name and password, then you simply store the incoming IP address.
When Mr. Wrong pirates Mr. Rights user name and password, you get the IP address that he is using. If it does not match Mr. Rights, then you limit the account and send an email off to Mr. Right explaining what to do to restore his account. And because all of this is server side, then it is all fairly protected.
I saw this used in Rift, when I unplugged my modem and plugged it back in. Awesome idea.
But what can you do if you don’t want to go through all that… Nothing, as has been explained before. People are GOING to pirate, they are GOING to steal stuff. The best you can do is limit the ability for them to do it.
EA though has those installers cause their games don’t fullfill the size requirements, not even with the 50mb limit
and the installer is broken too on different games of these publishers as they tend to fail to install on devices newer than it knows them (sims refuses to install on galaxy s2 for example) so its not a holy grail
That the streaming part is required is out of question, definitely
Though Google needs to work on “making users aware of it upfront” as some games that exceed beyond the 200mb range have some major trouble even downloading the stuff right (MW is such a case where even a 20mbit downstream wifi connection on the galaxy s2 required 3 tries to finally get it).
Just ensure to not follow the crap example of the 3 publishers you mentioned, using the disk without offering a “clear cache” function cause MW and alike, when uninstalled, leave the whole data bomb on the disk and if you aren’t on somehting like galaxy s2 or a rooted device, so you have a file manager, you don’t even see that they swamp your micro sd
hey Guys I know piracy is a big problem, Today i am a game developer so its my headache to. When i was not a Game developer few year ago, when i just play game, the Pirates were my gods they provide me all the best game which i want to play. My 100% apps were pirated but now when i have money i Realize no one should use the pirated apps, Now i pay for all apps which i use and also ask my friends to buy and use. The most pirated apps were used by the students who don’t have credit or debit cards to pay. Its takes nothing for them to pay 1 or 2$ for a app it is the situation to force them to do this. I am a student so i just tell about them which i know.
I am working on this thing (piracy) for few weeks and i am really close to give a big challenge to the pirates let see who wins my gods or me. . . . .
i am going to release my game in two months, so its time to rock, i love challenges . . . .
I know that this thread is old,… but, how it is going now?.
It is better to upload a Free game with Ads, with “In App Purchase” to can remove the Ads (and also unlock some “game modes”) than make two versions of the game (one Free version with Ads and other paid version without Ads and more game modes)?.
I guess that they can crack all…, but it will be harder using IAP to unlock a game than using, by example, Samsung Zirconia to protect a paid game?.
