Just a heads up to those of us here who are making games in Unity for the iPhone. I was stunned this morning to learn that all of my games to date (Bug Bounce, Garden Marbles and Cloud Girls) have been cracked and are available in lots of places/websites for download for free to jailbroken apps.
Then again, 29/30 popular games I searched for on these same sites are in the same dilemma. It seems that every game is most likely cracked at one point.
There apparently isn’t anything you can do to prevent a single dishonest game buyer from cracking your app for jb devices and posting it. Thought I’d mention this apparent issue before you invest 6 months of your life creating the next great game.
Grrrrrrr.
PS. At least jailbroken phones and devices make up only a small number of the overall % of devices put there
The good thing thought is that with OS 2.1 and more and more phone providers offering the iphone unlocked, there will likely be less and less jailbreak users. Its already by now a minority compared to the appstore customers.
Sure they will always be there but those who download it for free very likely wouldn’t have bought it anyway so its hard to call it a financial lose. But it sucks, thats for sure.
This is all true. Still pisses me off though. Every game and app out there cracked. Wow. Now I understand Steam and the essay by the guy who makes Kudos.
If you make a product that people want, it will eventually be cracked. All you can do about it is make it harder for them. Its unfortunate that you have no option of doing some processing on the application as it gets downloaded - that would allow you to do stuff like binding that particular download to that iPhone / touch ID.
Apart from that, there’s always the option of making most of your games features bound to online services.
Yup, Emil. When I do standalone versions of kids games (Widget United for example) I intend simply to, during the purchase off my website, require an password/name/email address/etc that I will put into the scoring database. If you play the game, you need to put that word into the submit score and it has to be there and then, and only then, will a) you get to post your score, or for that matter, see anyone elses score. But that’s the limit of my “protection” idea that I want to “impose” on people.
There is always piracy, period. A certain percentage of your users won’t be paying you, and to expect otherwise is asking for trouble. Loading lots of DRM on your app is often the knee-jerk reaction to piracy, but that only punishes legitimate users; pirates will pirate, and the instant your “strong DRM” is cracked once it’s cracked for everybody and instantly worthless. Worse than worthless - it’s punishing the users (through inconvenience and annoyance) who actually bought your app!
The real problem is Apple won’t let us sell apps direct to customers. If we could then we could build in arbitrary protection schemes into our apps (no security is perfect, but basically the ONLY security we have right now is whatever Apple provides).
With a personal device like the iPhone the obvious security is to link the serial number to the person’s name and/or phone number. Since you can weave serial number dependencies into your code in arbitrary ways, cracking the app essentially comes down to hackers disassembling your code and figuring out how it works, which is usually not worth anyone’s trouble.
(We found “Prince of Destruction” listed in several cracking compendiums – none of the stated cracks actually worked because we used a layered defense; all they did was provide serial numbers that passed our checksum – the first layer of defense. Of course PoD had several other advantages. It was a 680x0 program which meant its code was loaded via the resource manager. Andrew (the programmer) patched the resource loader with on-the-fly decompression and compressed all the game’s resources including its code blocks, which meant that hackers couldn’t disassemble our code without understanding the compression mechanism and reimplementing it. Ah Good Times.)
It’s also worth mentioning that most people who get into the “warez” scene are often little more than pack rats… people who collect content solely for the thrill of collecting content, rather than looking to profit from it or to get any actual use out of the content itself.
In a lot of cases, pirated games like these might get used once or twice before ending up tossed into some pile never to be used again.
In the meanwhile, I do think it would be more effective for content creators to invest in educating the end user about piracy rather than continuing to pursue DRM methods that will inevitably become cracked eventually.
Right now, we have a generation of users who’s first taste of the internet was right about the time P2P file sharing became huge. As such, they view piracy as harmless and acceptable use because they see so many people doing it. How do you explain to someone who regularly accesses P2P services to download copyrighted material that their activity is wrong, when in their mind, they justify their activity by the fact that these services aren’t being removed from the internet by some authority figure. Many of them don’t even comprehend the true nature of a P2P network, and mistakenly see these services as being contained on some centralized server like most other internet services, such as web sites.
However, it’s gotten more complicated in more recent years. Between the use of over-reaching DRM technologies and excessive litigation in some areas, we’re now starting to see a sense of entitlement to access content for free as a means of “punishing” companies as a form of vigilante justice. The problem is that this is now becoming viewed as acceptable practice and occurring indiscriminately toward anyone who dares charge the user for the content they create.
Obviously, something needs to be done. But the current knee-jerk reactions to these issues aren’t the answer.
Given this discussion sure, but overall I’d say it’s a trade off, not a problem. The finite nature of the store seems to help indies far more than hurt them, given the more even playing field. Just sayin’.
I agree and given the amount of apps on the app store, apple would not be able to keep any kind of control (preventing malware and other nasty stuff from showing up) if downloads were originating from developer sites.
What they could do is allow some kind of limited OnPurchase scripting/handling to be added to each app. That way they would be able to retain control while giving the developers some tools to, for instance, implement anti-cracking security measures.
I saw that my iPhone game (Sumo!) got cracked almost immediately. It’s included in one of the big packages of games you can get from bittorrent sites.
To use these cracked games, you’d have to jailbreak your phone and have some technical knowledge. The barrier to entry is high, compared to how Mac apps are available cracked (just download the app and go). And my Mac apps are on bittorrent too.
I was really pissed off about that for a week, but I got more zen. The biggest problem $$$ I have with my iPhone games isn’t the pirates, it’s how the store drives sales. The store giveth and taketh away. I think all iphone developers have seen how your app’s placement in lists makes a huge, dramatic difference in sales. And there’s no way to control that.
My two cents, with which some will agree and some won’t. Games will always be cracked, so embrace the crackers. Look for creative ways to help them market you. You cannot (and possibly should not) try to twist people’s arms, forcing them to pay. Some protection is good, but always remember there will always be crackers who will get a copy of the game, and some of them may be considered fans.
Don’t be mad because some people would prefer to read your book at a library or listen to your song on the radio.
After a weekends reflection on things … and somehow at the same time getting some walls painted, playing Munchkin with the kids several times, finishing Widget Monkey for iPhone release (except for my ineptitude on understanding iPhoneTouch.position), getting my fourth game Dessert Dilemma finished except for the score database, watching the season finale of Mad Men, and getting my September royalties from Apple … I’ve become quite Zen about things.
I can’t stop them. I’m in the same cracked company as all the other great iPhone games like X-Plane (cracked), Koi Pong (cracked), Trism (cracked), etc so I’m almost flattered. C’est la vie. I’ll keep doing what I’m loving to do despite the crackers with support from the forums I frequent.
Absolutely. I’m personally not worried about crackers – there are some folks who’ll never pay for anything anyway. Most people don’t jailbreak their iPhones and probably never will… the kind of person who wants to jailbreak is the kind of person who has bought an android…
Very true, although there’s little evidence that Apple is exerting much control right now except post-facto (i.e. AFTER people have been burned).
Yeah, the worst problem seems to be the lack of any kind of app “sorting” feature within the iPhone front-end to the App Store. It’s very easy (and very frustrating as a customer) to overlook new additions to the store because of this. (Not to mention the iTunes front-end is just plain annoying to use.)
About the only other option users have for determining new additions to the App Store is to look for apps that have no review rating tied to them yet, assuming you check regularly. (Perhaps Apple could at least add a “NEW” flag to the icon of freshly added titles in the store…)
