Just checked my leaderboards half way through yesterday. It's the way I know roughly how many new sales. Wow a 150 increase! When I got the sales report it was 9. I did some research and found that my app was on (Apptrackr.org) and people where getting it for free. I did some more research and found that jailbroken (hacked) iPhones and iPod Touches can install these pirated games. I was very annoyed, so I contacted apple and I am yet to get a reply. Has anyone else had this happen?
Just checked my leaderboards half way through yesterday. It's the way I know roughly how many new sales. Wow a 150 increase! When I got the sales report it was 9. I did some research and found that my app was on (Apptrackr.org) and people where getting it for free. I did some more research and found that jailbroken (hacked) iPhones and iPod Touches can install these pirated games. I was very annoyed, so I contacted apple and I am yet to get a reply. Has anyone else had this happen?
P.S it was with Ninja Jump!
There is nothing that Apple can do about it.. There will always be pirated games on any console you just have to put measures into your application to attempt to block this activity but most attempts will lead to failure as if they really want to break it then they will
I recently found my game Brain App on AppTrackr. It's cool tho, my anti-piracy code stops people using online features and blocks access to some of the modes ...essentially all the get is the same content as those that legitimately download the Lite version.
This would be trivial for apple to fix.. they just have to SHA(iphonekey+developer provided secret) and install it alongside the app.
Then all developers just check for that secret in some unique way and if it isn't there then exit the app.
It is true, hackers could get around this, but seriously.. no way in hell are hackers going to go through every single app reverse engineering this process (which would be different for every developer).
The reason pirated apps exist now is that it's so trivial to en masse pirate.
This has occurred to my as well. I've had several of my applications pirated and are on AppTrackr and Appscene.
I tried to add some of the methods discussed in this forum to stop the app from being pirated, but that didn't help at all. The binary was updated to add an unconditional jmp past the piracy check.
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the truly pathetic thing about this is that most of the arguments i've read in favor of pirating software and media is that people who can't buy it pirate it because they can't afford it. aside from this showing greediness beyond all reason, the excuse with the app store is gone since prices for software on it are insanely low. so many people price their app at 99 cents that i can't imagine anyone really not being able to afford that game that they want. meanwhile, console games go for $60 and have a much lower piracy rate. this attitude of taking something if you can't afford it is in no way defensible. when i was a teenager, i remember doing this after people i know did it and basically said they wouldn't pay for it because they could get it for free. after i somewhat later connected the dots, i stopped. why is our society so messed up that we think theft, or breaking any law for that matter, is a valid defensible way of life? i also remember in high school none of my fellow students being able to talk about virtues when the topic came up in class. i was the only one who even understood the concept. admittedly, i'm from flint, but still: how could this have happened? the trend seems to be followed everywhere...especially...on the web.
Just checked my leaderboards half way through yesterday. It's the way I know roughly how many new sales. Wow a 150 increase! When I got the sales report it was 9. I did some research and found that my app was on (Apptrackr.org) and people where getting it for free. I did some more research and found that jailbroken (hacked) iPhones and iPod Touches can install these pirated games. I was very annoyed, so I contacted apple and I am yet to get a reply. Has anyone else had this happen?
P.S it was with Ninja Jump!
Please check out http://mtiks.com, a new startup focusing only on iPhone App Anti-Piracy
This would be trivial for apple to fix.. they just have to SHA(iphonekey+developer provided secret) and install it alongside the app.
Then all developers just check for that secret in some unique way and if it isn't there then exit the app.
It is true, hackers could get around this, but seriously.. no way in hell are hackers going to go through every single app reverse engineering this process (which would be different for every developer).
The reason pirated apps exist now is that it's so trivial to en masse pirate.
It is not trivial to fix. If it can run on a device at all, it can run pirated. If the "secret check" is done in the OS, then when they're jailbreaking the remove the secret check. If it's done in the application they can sniff what you're doing and remove it. There is no "unique" way. There's going to be some commonality to it that makes it detectable (because you're calling an API, because you're displaying a message, because you're taking an obviously different code path).
I know that the "cracker" M0st_Unique prowls these forums. I put a couple app codes out on here and the next day the App was cracked. It is inevitable that your application is going to be cracked at one point or another.
Let's think constructively on how to tap into this lucrative piracy issue
1. Free Marketing
2. Lot's of downloads Free
If you set your app to 99 cents or free you might as well register Apptrackr & submit your app there for people to get for free ....BUT ADD ADVERTISEMENT!
The problem is nobody love ads, if you can possibly do IOS 4 app...the Apple Ads will be a good addition to the apps
If your apps are good...you will get LOADS of advertising FREE
Does anyone here know how to upload apps to these sites? If we could gather this whole community to spam the Cracked app databases with nonworking files, we could do some damage. WAR!
We could also upload files that have a notification at startup to tell the user that what they are doing is illegal and that their information has been gathered and is being sent to authorities.... ya know, freak them out a bit
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