This SUX - I mean come on $0.99! « cocos2d for iPhone

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This SUX - I mean come on $0.99!

(9 posts) (5 voices)

Started 2 years ago by cybergreg
Latest reply from pabloruiz55

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cybergreg
Member

I thought I'd check out what's happening in the jailbreak world. I'm not going to mention the name of the app but let me just say that you can now jailbreak your iPhone, install an app, search for a paid app, like Stickwars (yup!) click a frakin' link, download and then install it. Exit the app and there's the paid version of Stickwars right on my desktop!

I mean come on; they are stooping so low that they have to crack flippin' $0.99 apps!

Sorry, this just pisses me off and I don't even have any apps on the store (yet).

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Yes, even popular $0.99 apps have 90% piracy rate. Unlike on the BB store, Apple doesn't provide much help to developers to protect themselves.

However, good copy protection techniques can prevent most "crackers" to distribute your game.

Posted 2 years ago #
cybergreg
Member

re: "However, good copy protection techniques can prevent most "crackers" to distribute your game."

I would think so but wouldn't you think big app developers like SMULE use protection? At least the basic stuff? Maybe they do / did but I just tried out T-Pain and it worked just like Stickwars. :-{

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

I don't know if they do. But I know that the best protections (quite difficult to code though) can cause significant trouble even to groups like COREPDA.

Posted 2 years ago #
Mitch Lindgren
Member

I'm going to make myself unpopular by asking this, but is it worth it to fight crackers? I've seen the thwart iPhone IPA crackers blog and some of the techniques on there seem pretty easy, but I actually can't help but wonder if the word of mouth generated by piracy outweighs the lost sales. Lots of consumers don't want to bother with jailbreaking their phone, but perhaps if they see your app on a jailbroken phone, they'll decide to buy it.

(Disclaimer: I don't advocate piracy. My phone is not jailbroken and I have never pirated iPhone apps. I'm just not so sure fighting the crackers is worth the time and effort.)

Posted 2 years ago #
cybergreg
Member

^ yeah there is a lot posted on this but there seems to be some real easy stuff but I guess if it doesn't work to prevent cracking, why even bother.

Sorry - I don't mean to imply that it is okay to crack apps that cost more than $0.99, it's not okay regardless of the price!
:-/

Posted 2 years ago #
QcMat
Member

Before starting programming video games, I used to do lots of PHP and sell scripts online. All they had to do was give the zip to anyone they want or upload it on a torrent. People were exchanging things freely in the forum if noone moderated. I'm happy to start programming for something as secure as the iPhone, compared to web development, where people rip off your work and resell it on eBay or on a website with minor modifications (or none).

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Well, if your piracy checks transforms your full version in a Lite, you can make nice money converting pirates or with ads.

I am personally happy that pirated versions of my apps display ads. They bring in as much revenue as the Lite version.

Posted 2 years ago #
pabloruiz55
Member

Hey ob1 how exactly are you doing that? i read this a while ago but never used it and i was wondering if it really worked.

http://thwart-ipa-cracks.blogspot.com/2008/11/detection.html

This part:

The one thing for certain is that THIS KEY-VALUE PAIR SHOULD NOT BE IN ANY APP STORE APPLICATION. If you do find it during runtime then you know your application has been compromised.

Below is some rudimentary code that checks if this key-value pair is present in your application bundle's Info.plist.

NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
NSDictionary *info = [bundle infoDictionary];
if ([info objectForKey: @"SignerIdentity"] != nil)
{
/* do something */
}

Now you're going to say, how come you're not checking for the value of the key-value pair? Well, I say, you don't need to. If you didn't put that key-value pair into your Info.plist then you definitely didn't put that key in.

Posted 2 years ago #

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