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Let's share some code to protect our games from piracy? From simplest to complicated ones.
There are many links on web, including payed/donated ones, but let's see if someone already implemented something...
I had pretty bad experience with my latest game, with more than 1500% ratio of pirated/legal copies and I want to implement that code not to limit my game in any way, but to show ads to those players.
Thanks
sserye
Member
Have any of you guys try this?
Dr Touch anticrack:
http://www.drobnik.com/touch/anticrack/
I would like to hear some feedback about this anti piracy code.
bradparks
Member
I know the following posts talk about this in some detail... It's something I'm definitely interested in, and will probably put in my apps when I get one done ;-)
http://blog.off-by-one.mobi/2009/10/in-app-purchase-and-state-of-iphone.html
http://thwart-ipa-cracks.blogspot.com/2008/11/detection.html
Those were helpful links, thanks.
I think it was David Whatley (sp?) (geodefense) at the 360idev conference that was saying its not even worth your time to try and stop pirates. It's going to get cracked and that's the end of it.
Developers need to change their mentality of a cracked download = a lost sale. These are people who wouldn't even pay for your app if it was five cents.
"Only one out of every 14 average users tends to purchase the paid version of an app after using the lite version, which is just under 7.5 percent. For pirates, the conversion rate is less than half a percent, or one out of every 233."
I think your time would be better spent focusing on honing gameplay and adding polish and try to get that 7.5% and 0.5% conversion rates up -- rather than combating those who have no intention of buying anything ever.
Quote source: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/10/app-piracy-may-be-more-serious-than-first-though-on-iphone.ars
My advice: Don't bother.
There is not a single program in the world that hasn't been cracked. The harder the protection, the greater the challenge, the more likely it will get cracked.
There are two kinds of people you are dealing with here:
1. Crackers, who do it for fun, fame, and challenge.
2. Pirates, who just want something for free (and often they're just adding it to some huge collection of games/programs they'll never use).
Neither of them would buy your program even if it were uncrackable.
I should add:
The purpose of copy protection is not to stop piracy, but rather to make it inconvenient.
You must then make sure that YOUR method of distribution is more convenient to the average user and doesn't feel like a price gouge.
Apple has already done this step for you. Jailbreaking an iphone requires a fair bit of technical know-how that 90% of the population doesn't have. Their choices are:
1. Pay/beg someone to jailbreak their phone for them, and then find someone who knows how to copy pirated games onto their phone. Bear in mind most of these people don't even know how to extract an archive.
2. Just go and buy it through the app store.
I think detecting cracked versions and showing ads might be worth investigating. I agree with the others that trying to stop piracy is not worth the effort; and I'd bet that some number of pirates tell their non-jailbroken friends about what they're playing, possibly causing increased sales equal to the sales lost.
In the article linked above, there was a really simple method for detection...
NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
NSDictionary *info = [bundle infoDictionary];
if ([info objectForKey: @"SignerIdentity"] != nil)
{
/* do something */
}Does anyone know if you would be breaking any of the developer agreements if you intentionally crashed your program in that scenario? :) As Karl stated, if we are shooting to make it inconvenient, I think having to hex edit the executable remove that check would be pretty inconvenient.
Here's one thing to remember when blocking Jailbreak. I once had a Jailbreak on my iPod. The only reason I didn't keep it is because it makes it choppy and slow sometimes. I didn't pirate anything. I liked jailbreak because I could put my own themes and could do alot more stuff than a normal iPod.
If you find ways to block modified versions of your app, fine, but don't screw customers who bought your game on a Jailbreaked iPod/iPhone by just blocking any device with a Jailbreak. I bought plenty of apps when I was.
bradparks
Member
yeah, i totally agree that it's not worth trying to stop piracy... i'm just going to try and use the pirates to market my game, but possibly even showing some "pirated only" material.... I know it sounds completely out there, but I do think that you can't stop pirates, and that the best thing you can get from it is word of mouth.... so that's the only reason I want to know if it's been pirated or not.... I'm hoping the above check or something similar will do the trick!
Orta posted code some time ago to stop casual crackers, showing them a different game than what everyone else sees: http://ortatherox.com/pirates/ As I recall, it was similar to what's posted above, checking SignerIdentity. Not sure if it's still an effective solution or not.
I think your showing ads on pirated copies idea is great, as you're turning a population of users who would most likely not be paying customers anyway into a potential revenue stream.
I am thinking something more except displaying them ads. Something like this:
"Hey. I was so kind to let you play my game without paying for it.
Now return favor, and click that banner at least once per game. Thank you!"
Any thoughts?
How will AdMob know? They will download pirated game? :)
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