Piracy

yes please.

What about negative ratings from p*ssed off pirates, is this a factor to consider?

I'm not sure how Cydia works, does the app store think they've bought the game? or do they download the apps from somewhere else?

Bigfoot, I think you download it from third party sites and then sincronize it with your jail broken device. A feature like this to avoid pirating would be greatly welcome.

I heard they can also get free in-app purchases, how is this possible?

It annoys me somewhat that as developers we have to go through this whole song and dance with certificates and provisions for the app, yet Apple doesn't seem to bothered about making it difficult for the pirates. Surely theres more they could do. Every sale lost is 30% they don't get.

+1

+1

Quote from Bigfoot

It annoys me somewhat that as developers we have to go through this whole song and dance with certificates and provisions for the app, yet Apple doesn't seem to bothered about making it difficult for the pirates. Surely theres more they could do. Every sale lost is 30% they don't get.

If you are annoyed with Apple, you are gonna be pissed with Google...

I've found AWESOME Land on all kinds of pirate sites. The people who jailbreak and pirate weren't going to pay for it anyway, so I never let pirates worry me. Besides, they might show the game to their non-pirate friends and spread word of mouth around the net.

I have to agree. I assume many people are on the fence and wont spend money if theres an option not to, take away that option and some will still pay.

Skype has a message that says "Skype only works on non-jailbroken devices"

But just because someone has Cydia installed, doesn't mean they are a pirate. It basically just unlocks their device to do what they want with it. Installous would be the app you'd want it to search for.

What I think is stupid is apps aren't even expensive. How cheap do you have to be to not pay for it?

This is a big issue and one which I've been thinking about for a while now. The trouble is I don't think there's any really foolproof method of detecting this really. The only truly foolproof method would be to verify once/each time with the apple records to check whether there is a valid purchase receipt there, but I don't know if this is even possible? Even then, this could be prone to hacking to circumvent it. Perhaps the gamecentre offers some way to work this?

As for stopping people from getting free in-app purchases - I'd recommend that you encrypt/encode any data which is stored such as an INI file. This doesn't even require an encryption extension, a simple lookup table to match obfuscated codes to products which is held as an internal array or string object would at least offer some protection. In this way, you could even check for signs of tampering. If people try to guess values in the INI file, and your program detects entries which do not match an internal list or some sort of checksum, you could upload some details such as IP address or whatever to a PHP/ASP script using the get object and even go so far as to block the application from running.

As long as you ensure this works perfectly, the only people who would have problems are those tampering with internal data files so it shouldn't cause genuine customers any issue.

I disagree with the sentiment that pirates weren't going to buy it anyway. I think there is a morality break at the moment and people don't necessarily see it as piracy if they've found it free... especially when there are ever easier ways to get hold of pirated games. As was said, if someone was on the fence then it might sway them towards not paying. You can't even guarantee revenue from pirates via advertising either, as adblocking is extremely easy to achieve on iOS and Android.

Damn pirates! D:

Quote from cfullerNY

DistantJ

I have many friends who have released iOS games. Their sales drop coincides with the day the games appear on pirate sites.

"The people who jailbreak and pirate weren't going to pay for it anyway" may be your opinion, but I disagree with it, and I do not think it is the correct attitude for everyone else to take.

Well, CD Projekt has that attitude with their games and gog.com so I wouldn't say it isn't a correct attitude. Personal preference, but here's the thing: you will NEVER stop pirates. Seriously, if EA and other multi million dollar publishers can't stop piracy... do you really think you can? Focusing on lost sales you'll never get won't solve anything. I still maintain providing a great product people are willing to spend money on is the route to go. Give them value and they'll think it's worth their money. Lost piracy sales you'd never get anyway. People who pirate would never buy it most likely and they'd find a way to pirate regardless. There's been a great debate over the whole "lost sales" thing, but at the end of the day nobody can prove just how much they actually lost and how many of those pirates would have purchased it anyway. If someone wouldn't purchase it even if piracy wasn't an option, then either way that's a sale you never would make and can't be counted as lost. Sure, some people would pay if they didn't have the option, but it's impossible to say how many.

Another key (and probably the biggest one) is to price your product right. iOS games are almost always cheap so that's probably not an issue here, but I've seen some indie games for PC that were just extremely over priced for what you're getting. Nobody is going to pay for an overpriced product.

I'm not saying you won't lose sales to piracy, that would be naive of me. I'm saying there is nothing you can do about it and so focusing time and energy on it is a waste. And a lot of other devs (even big names, CD Projekt is hardly a small company) feel the same. That said, rudimentary non-intrusive methods are worth a shot I suppose, at least to make it not so easy for the average person. But I wouldn't fret over it.