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Square Enix Reverses Course on 'Deus Ex' Anti-Jailbreak Code
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I was under the impression that one was innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around
This may be an unpopular post, but I support SE in their attempt to reduce piracy. Yes, it was using a blunt object to try to accomplish a very specific objective. But I have to sympathize with companies who put time, money and effort into a product just to see huge numbers of people steal it.
Here are my thoughts as to why they weren't totally wrong:
1. We don't know the number of people who have pirated SE games, but SE may be able to see how many activations, or server pings or whatever. There are precedents where developers sold a small number of copies and yet had thousands of users attaching to their servers to play. So, it's not improbable that this is a serious problem for a high profile game.
2. They really said that the reason that they are reversing is that they didn't do a good job of explaining that this would happen BEFORE purchasing. If there is plenty of warning given to customers, then only jailbreakers that were also stupid would be hurt. Yes, they might lose some (again difficult to quantify) customers, but it would be because those customers valued what they get from jailbreaking more than they wanted to play the game. Much less of a backlash than you would get if someone paid money and then couldn't play the game.
3. I am aware that many jailbreakers have no intention of stealing software and that if very clever you can steal on non-jailbroken devices, but the anecdotal evidence says that there are substantial numbers of jailbreakers who are also pirating apps. It's like the porpoises and the tuna. It's really sad that some porpoises get caught in tuna nets, but let's be honest, the ratio of tuna to porpoises is pretty large.
Anyway, I feel bad that in order to not alienate some customers, a company has to allow its product to be stolen by many others. Hopefully, they can find a more elegant way to only block those who don't have a legitimate right to play.
Here are my thoughts as to why they weren't totally wrong:
1. We don't know the number of people who have pirated SE games, but SE may be able to see how many activations, or server pings or whatever. There are precedents where developers sold a small number of copies and yet had thousands of users attaching to their servers to play. So, it's not improbable that this is a serious problem for a high profile game.
2. They really said that the reason that they are reversing is that they didn't do a good job of explaining that this would happen BEFORE purchasing. If there is plenty of warning given to customers, then only jailbreakers that were also stupid would be hurt. Yes, they might lose some (again difficult to quantify) customers, but it would be because those customers valued what they get from jailbreaking more than they wanted to play the game. Much less of a backlash than you would get if someone paid money and then couldn't play the game.
3. I am aware that many jailbreakers have no intention of stealing software and that if very clever you can steal on non-jailbroken devices, but the anecdotal evidence says that there are substantial numbers of jailbreakers who are also pirating apps. It's like the porpoises and the tuna. It's really sad that some porpoises get caught in tuna nets, but let's be honest, the ratio of tuna to porpoises is pretty large.
Anyway, I feel bad that in order to not alienate some customers, a company has to allow its product to be stolen by many others. Hopefully, they can find a more elegant way to only block those who don't have a legitimate right to play.
Also false. We were talking in the other thread that it is possible to pirate apps without jailbreaking, but requires access to a dev account.
huh? How do you figure? Hell, I have *more* paid software on my phone because of the jailbreak, as I have several very handy tools and tweaks from Cydia and not available from Apple's app store that I've paid for
I doubt this move was made purely to appease jailbreaker's sense of inflated importance. It was more likely done to avoid a class action lawsuit for not mentioning it in the description of the product beforehand.
I wouldn't be surprised to see this form of DRM return in the future, with a proper warning in the product description. Afterall, it's only people with jailbroken devices that have the opportunity to pirate iOS software. (notice I didn't say all jailbreakers == pirates eh!)
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That's hardly the same thing. Do you really think a pirate is going go through all the trouble to get a dev account when they can just jailbreak?
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Hey, you pirated my line from the previous thread! lol! Jailbreaker!!!!
I wouldn't be surprised to see this form of DRM return in the future, with a proper warning in the product description. Afterall, it's only people with jailbroken devices that have the opportunity to pirate iOS software. (notice I didn't say all jailbreakers == pirates eh!)
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That's hardly the same thing. Do you really think a pirate is going go through all the trouble to get a dev account when they can just jailbreak?
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Hey, you pirated my line from the previous thread! lol! Jailbreaker!!!!
Thats very naive. They don't need to, there are people who buy dev accounts and then sell of the 99 slots of certificates they have to co sign for $10 each. Piracy is RIFE this way, there is an app which co-signs with your provisioning profile in seconds.
No, there are better ways to handle piracy, many of them have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with business models.lol...users who wants to steal?
wahahahah.
i dont play this game but i fully support this myself.
if they dont block, they should at least have a notice before the game starts
I do not condone piracy in the least, heck I do some programming myself and expect to be paid for the work done. That being said, I think when there are overly complicated methods used to combat piracy, it can end up having the opposite effect, because people just want to be able to use <<insert program here>>
In this instance, it promotes piracy, because now people will pirate games from them just to make sure that this code isn't there.
In the case of games like this, there are unique IDs from every phone, they could compare that to the purchased list and see if the app was paid for or not.
But I really don't think it's about piracy at all, I instead think it's about people finding ways around any In App purchases and/or cheating to get better whatever the game might "sell"
Don't blame the employees for it. They are just told what to do so they can keep their jobs.
Doubt it. The average joe doesn't even know how to jailbreak a phone, let alone even know what a jailbroken phone is or the point of even doing it for that matter.
Be honest about it dude, You Know many jailbreakers aren't buying many apps, if jailbreakers were well known for buying apps then these companies wouldn't going through such lengths to stop piracy from jailbreakers.
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You're right but on a PC or Mac game companies are now requiring online gameplay only so the activation code can be verified or the other course is they are going the Steam route.