Piracy Cripples iOS Game in Less than a Week

[Billy Boo Bob]

There is no way to tell who purchased an app legitimately. Apple does not share this information with developers.

Well, if Apple would help, they certainly could... I'm sure any iOS app has the same kind of App Store receipt that Mac App Store apps have (Contents/_MASReceipt/receipt)... This info is private to Apple for a variety of things (probably App Store version checks for updates, machine authorization, account verification, verifying a match of other data inside it with what Apple has on record, etc...)...

If it gets removed before being distributed to hide the ID of who originally purchased it, then the developer simply tests for the presence of that file... Not there? Don't run... Is there? Well... If Apple would allow it (with their very strict app rules) you could run an MD5 hash on that file and have the hash string sent along with the check-in to the game server. It doesn't give the developer any privacy info about the user, just that a copy of that .ipsw was loaded. If you're seeing a few copies hit the server then that's fine... Shared apps with family members / multiple iOS devices in the family can account for that... If you start seeing dozens / hundreds / thousands of that hash show up, then you disable it. No private info being sent to the server / developer.

And, Apple could provide, in the OS, a method for the developer to simply ask the OS if this is a legit receipt in the first place so people don't just put some junk file there in order to not leave the filepath empty.

 

[baryon]

Isn't there a way to block only the pirated copies from accessing the server? I mean most PC multiplayer games already do that, so it's not possible to play with a pirated copy. Wouldn't that be an option?

In this case, not only are people using software they didn't pay for, but they're also creating more damage by using a server they're not paying for…

 

[H2SO4]

As much as I hate people pirating things, I think this developer simply don't know how to control their online system. They may well require customers to create a log-in and set up their own payment system, or require in-app purchase for online functionalities. There are always thieves, especially for softwares. Don't blame the thieves. Blame your security system. I'm sure in Android there must be 10 times more pirates than in iOS given the difficulty in jailbreaking newer iOS devices. Then why are there some Android developers still afloat? People are cheap and they will steal your thing if it's very easy to do so. It's life.

EH? You're joking right? WADR. You are an ass. The ONLY person you can blame for stealing something is the thief. Sure the developer can make things harder but he is not to blame, he didn't help but the's not the blame.

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Well, those examples would be comparable to trying a game's free trial. However this case is stealing the product and then 'maybe' paying for it later if they like it. That is comparable to stealing IRL. No difference, really.

Can't believe you all can't see the simple difference. We all know what the point is but the analogy fails because if I pirate a game, usually the owner can still play it also as it's more often than not been copied. If I take his headphones he can't.

 

[Makosuke]

There's a relatively important distinction to be made between two types of pirated software that at least a few people don't seem to be grasping:

A: In the case of a music album, a movie, or a "traditional" game, if you pirate it, try it, and decide to buy it, the original producer wasn't directly harmed by the action, at least in theory. And if some good-for-nothing jerk pirates it and doesn't pay, but never was going to in the first place, he's benefitting from somebody else's hard work that he has no right to and deserves to get punched in the face, but again, he's not actually causing active harm to the creators of said work. Might even be helping them, if he tells a friend who's not quite so much of a lout how awesome the game/album/movie is and that friend goes out and buys it.

Leaving aside the large grey area of abandonware or things that aren't available legally, at any price, in your country.

There is a much, much different case, however, which applies to situations like this story:

B: For software that has a cost of supplying service, such as (mainly, really) an online game that requires servers to support it, if somebody pirates it and doesn't pay for it, then the developer is having to support the pirated user with actual outlay of resources, without the corresponding compensation expected for it.

It doesn't take a genius to tell the difference between those two versions.

Now, in type A, it is certainly possible for everybody to pirate something, to the point that nobody buys it and the creator just can't make enough money to justify producing the material. It has certainly happened in at least some cases. But there are other cases where the opposite has played out, and a large middle ground (the modern movie industry, for example) where it seems to be more or less a wash. The analogy of intangible good piracy = shoplifting, however, just isn't 100% equivalent.

Type B is a different matter entirely--that's pretty much directly equivalent to shoplifting. You're stealing something--bandwith and server resources--that you're not paying for. You can only make the argument you're not if you're either 12 years old and not too sharp, or just an idiot. Or an unashamed pirate, which probably puts you in one or both of the other categories.


And I should add that I hate DRM with a passion (and when given the option, didn't put it on the books I've published online, so my money is where my mouth is), but if it comes down to no DRM = no game for anybody, you don't really have much choice.

I'll also add that even if this story turned out to not be true (which I can't honestly see why--if they're not selling the game and giving refunds, there's no marketing benefit for the company), the above still holds entirely true.

 

[THOPMedia]

i pirate games, and if i like them i'll buy them. if i dont i delete the game.

Congrats! You are a thief.

Edit: I see now that this fact has already been made known.
So I shall change my response: you are an ass.

 

[Macman45]

A crappy thing indeed, but if they're refunding 100% of the money they earned from the legit users, won't he be losing money, as they've obviously had costs along the way? :/

Dev's always lose when piracy is involved...Time taken to write the code, setup the servers is not included in the monies taken from the buyers. This kind of thing makes me sick, and I really hope we do not see an increase in IOS hacked apps, but I'm afraid it's a sign of the times...IOS is becoming increasingly more popular as a gaming platform, and with popularity comes piracy.

 

[freedevil]

The biggest problem is the lack of game trials. I don't mind spending money but I have no idea if I'll like a game or not by just looking at the images and reading the description.

 

[firewood]

i pirate games, and if i like them i'll buy them. if i dont i delete the game.

For every one like you (assuming you aren't lying to yourself as well as us), you encourage and support an ecosystem of around 10 to 100 others who are even less honorable than you

App piracy is a sad fact. Crooks exist. The developers of this game were a little stupid in not figuring out ahead of time a business plan and marketing strategy that would take advantage of this piracy instead of being killed by it.

 

[Brian Y]

The amount of people on their high horse in this thread is ridiculous.

It's NOT theft. It's software piracy. There's a difference.

To those using the headphone's analogy - try using something more relevant. Say I go to an art dealer, see a painting I like, and take a photograph of it. I then have it printed, and hung on my wall. No, it's probably not fair, but the original owner hasn't lost anything (unless you count a potential sale).

It's been proven many times that piracy actually increases sales in most industries - server based games, like this, however are possibly the one exception to the rule due to the relatively high cost of running servers. To all of those stuck on their high horses - have you never downloaded an MP3, or ripped a song off of youtube, only to discover you really like the band - and then go out and buy their CD, or (even better for the band) gone to see them live?

I suggest you read this - it's a really good editorial about Piracy, and some of the reasons people do it. http://www.neowin.net/news/editorial-how-piracy-changed-my-life

 

[Tastydirt]

A good way to temporarily fix their piracy issue is to require iOS 6.0 as the minimum version to prevent most jailbroken people who are still running 5.x.

This isn't a long term fix but it buys them some time to work out the server load issue before 6.0 is jailbroken.

 

[thewitt]

The amount of people on their high horse in this thread is ridiculous.

It's NOT theft. It's software piracy. There's a difference.

[clip]

It's been proven many times that piracy actually increases sales in most industries[clip]

Sorry, there is no difference. It's theft.

There is no proof that piracy increases sales. That's more nonsense spouted by thieves to rationalize their theft.

I've been developing software for more than 25 years, and pirates have been spouting the same nonsense for just as long. It's never been true, and it continues to simply be rationalized theft.

 

[Truffy]

If they can differentiate between pirated copy and original copy of the client software, why don't they just restrict access to the server for the pirated one?

Perhaps they can't differentiate the two, but they can estimate the level of piracy from the revenue that the number of copies hitting their servers should've generated minus the actual revenue accrued.

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It's NOT theft. It's software piracy. There's a difference.

To those using the headphone's analogy - try using something more relevant. Say I go to an art dealer, see a painting I like, and take a photograph of it. I then have it printed, and hung on my wall. No, it's probably not fair, but the original owner hasn't lost anything (unless you count a potential sale).

It's been proven many times that piracy actually increases sales in most industries - server based games, like this, however are possibly the one exception to the rule due to the relatively high cost of running servers. To all of those stuck on their high horses - have you never downloaded an MP3, or ripped a song off of youtube, only to discover you really like the band - and then go out and buy their CD, or (even better for the band) gone to see them live?

Piracy is theft, there is no difference.

Your photographing a painting analogy is flawed because what you end up with is a different entity (it lacks the texture of paint and canvas/paper, for example, which adds to the specialness of a painting).

And you don't have to rip off YT to discover new music there and buy it. Trust me.

 

[djstile]

Then why don't you go down to the store, shoplift a pair of headphones, then if you like them go back and pay for them, or if you don't chuck them out?

You kind of can...buy headphones, return them within the return period, get all your money back. I know the point you were trying to make but this does bring up iOS's nonsensical lack of an app return policy. I do believe there are some people who would buy more apps or pirate less apps if they were able to try them out first, even for 15 minutes like android.

 

[thewitt]

You kind of can...buy headphones, return them within the return period, get all your money back. I know the point you were trying to make but this does bring up iOS's nonsensical lack of an app return policy. I do believe there are some people who would buy more apps or pirate less apps if they were able to try them out first, even for 15 minutes like android.

Though this is a compelling argument, it has not proven itself on the Android platform, where piracy is so high many of us have dropped the paid software model completely and gone with adware instead. We won't bring our premium offerings to Android because there is so little chance of financial return.

I would like to see Apple support a demo or limited use mode however, and do believe it would result in more sales, but not because it would stop thieves, only because it allows more people to be exposed to your app.

 

[firewood]

Piracy is theft, there is no difference

Talk to your local District Attorney and an IP lawyer. There's a huge difference. Two completely different legal specialties, laws and jurisdictions.

Copyrights also expire at a time determined by the whim of Congress, when all your IP will become legally free for the taking. Will Disney be able to buy off politicians forever?

 

[Brian Y]

Sorry, there is no difference. It's theft.

There is no proof that piracy increases sales. That's more nonsense spouted by thieves to rationalize their theft.

I've been developing software for more than 25 years, and pirates have been spouting the same nonsense for just as long. It's never been true, and it continues to simply be rationalized theft.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...tudy-finds-internet-downloads-increase-sales/

http://www.osnews.com/story/24376/Piracy_Increases_Anime_DVD_Sales_Study_Concludes

http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/bittorrent-piracy-increases-sales-of-leaked-albums-study/

Yeah, no proof at all.

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Piracy is theft, there is no difference.

Your photographing a painting analogy is flawed because what you end up with is a different entity (it lacks the texture of paint and canvas/paper, for example, which adds to the specialness of a painting).

And you don't have to rip off YT to discover new music there and buy it. Trust me.

Erm, nope. Legally, piracy is not theft. By definition of theft, you take without consent. If you download something illegally, then you haven't removed anything, you have duplicated (no matter what the various industry bodies would like you to believe).

It's copyright infringement at best.

And for the record I'm a software developer (granted I haven't been around 25 years) - I've written a small piece of software which handles load balancing of web servers - sells for £199, and has been doing quite well.

There's a pirated version of my software floating around - have I tried to get it removed? No way. There's a small piece of code which displays a banner in pirated copies (only in the admin panel) asking them to buy a license, and I quote "or at least make a charitable donation, send me an email with proof, and I'll send them a key to remove the banner". One small company made a £500 donation to Cancer Research UK, and I've had over £10k in sales through this banner, all originating through pirated copies. I doubt these people would have bought the software if they hadn't pirated it first.

Digging further into sales, registered users get 3 support tickets included, but you can buy more at £50-£150 (multi packs or diagnostics) a pop (a strategy clearly targeted to "unregistered" users - since I never limit registered customers to the 3). Support tickets from unregistered users who haven't purchased the software make up, on average, 10% of revenue. That is - for every 2 and a half registered users, there's a pirate who needs help. Now, I could get on my high horse and say "Look, you didn't pay for the software, bugger off", or I could sell them a support ticket for £50. Since there's no material cost-per-copy to me, I'll take the £50 from the pirate, thanks.

 

[johannnn]

Don't bother to sell a game to me if it won't work when many people play it at the same time. Make your game scale better.

 

[firewood]

I would like to see Apple support a demo or limited use mode however, and do believe it would result in more sales, but not because it would stop thieves, only because it allows more people to be exposed to your app.

Apple does. It's called in-app-purchase, and an increasing number of developers are taking advantage of it. Find the free app useful, but find more and more ads appearing? Pay to remove. Or pay to play the next bunch of levels. Or for more app-berries instead of 100 hours of digging. There's still piracy, but reportedly less of it.

 

[smirking]

Apple does. It's called in-app-purchase, and an increasing number of developers are taking advantage of it. Find the free app useful, but find more and more ads appearing? Pay to remove. Or pay to play the next bunch of levels. Or for more app-berries instead of 100 hours of digging. There's still piracy, but reportedly less of it.

In-app purchases are screwed up too. Most of the the people dominating a lot of the multi-player games found ways to get free in-app money.

If you've ever played a game like Original Gangstaz you may have noticed that there are an awful lot of rich wanna be virtual tough guys totally dominating the game and being total pricks to everyone. People's first reaction is that they can't believe there are people who are such losers that they'd spend thousands of dollars to bully other players online like that. You can stop laughing at their foolishness because that game is the epitome of this problem. The most dominant players aren't paying anything to the devs. They're finding ways to obtain their "Street Creds" (the in-app currency) through hacks and cheats.

In the case of Original Gangstaz, I don't think the devs really care because they actually end up making bank because the cheaters drive a lot of purchases from people who got ripped by them and want to get even. One guy who hacks his way to $10,000 worth of street cred, bullies and trash talks dozens of people to spend $20 or $50 in futility to try to get even without realizing that the bully isn't playing by the same rules.

Just about every multiplayer game I've seen has signs of rampant cheating like this.

 

[Music_Producer]

To all of those stuck on their high horses - have you never downloaded an MP3, or ripped a song off of youtube, only to discover you really like the band - and then go out and buy their CD, or (even better for the band) gone to see them live?

I suggest you read this - it's a really good editorial about Piracy, and some of the reasons people do it. http://www.neowin.net/news/editorial-how-piracy-changed-my-life

Right

Not every band/musician plays live.. or for that matter, wants to. I quit music a while ago (professionally) because there is no way to make a living anymore as an artist. Only the high-end artists make it (a handful) Studios are shutting down, music labels are pushing singles instead of albums.. studio engineers, mixing personnel are working for peanuts., etc etc.

Speaking from personal experience, I put up a 30 second clip of one of my tracks on YouTube. Kinda like radio, right? If you like what you hear, you buy it. If not, no big deal. 90% of the comments were 'Where can I download this song for free?'

Seriously, people don't want to pay $0.99 for a song. And you might think, that oh well at least it's publicity. Guess what? The ones who download illegally, will continue to do so. They don't understand the time, effort and money that goes into making a song/ tv show/ movie, etc. If it's easily available, effortless to download, and best of all - without any consequences.. then why not do so?

 

[cdmoore74]

We won't bring our premium offerings to Android because there is so little chance of financial return.

So your saying that the story is full of crap and every ios pays? Or are you saying every Android user is a thief? Not all ios/Apple users are saints. As a Android user I pay for each and every app. Same can be said about ios users as well.

 

[Varedis]

Don't bother to sell a game to me if it won't work when many people play it at the same time. Make your game scale better.

Maybe you should invite them to live in your magical fantasy world where servers cost nothing to run. I'm pretty sure they did their maths and factored in scaling server architecture to accomodate users, but they can't do that if a large portion of the players haven't paid to be on the servers in the first place.

 

[92jlee]

On the other hand we have Adobe's software that costs thousands of pounds - bet hardly any of you on this forum actually paid for it! "oh but they made their money already" "ill buy it when I become a professional" etc..
I pirate, I won't lie. I torrent pretty much everything because too many times ive bought a game, program or film and they are either rubbish, don't do what they are suppose to etc.

I torrent and if I like what I download then ill go out and buy it.

 

[hamkor04]

Then why don't you go down to the store, shoplift a pair of headphones, then if you like them go back and pay for them, or if you don't chuck them out?

I think he is trying to say, that games or other paid apps should be offered as a trial app for try it out. Or they offer 7 or 14 days money back guaranty schema?
There is no other way to cut piracy down, if they offer trial they will cut piracy at least 50% (it is tested, and don't try to ignore it)

 

[BergerFan]

Apple needs to implement some sort of digital signing feature, that is linked to your iTunes account, and only gets activated when you make the purchase.
Then give devs some sort of way to deny access to any .ipa file that's hasn't gone through that process.
Surely there has to be a way, for Apple to add something like this, considering the App Store is the only gatekeeper?

The other way, is to make your game free, and have one IAP, to unlock the full content.