Developer frustrated that Apple grants Game Center support to pirated iOS apps

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  • Reply 141 of 145
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pmz View Post


    This topic has brought out sheer ignorance in this thread. A quick read through indicates that many people are willing to accuse everyone who jailbreaks their device of stealing from Apple, without any evidence whatsoever.



    It's a couple of years old but here's some evidence to suggest there's a fairly high percentage of jailbreakers stealing:



    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...u_buy_myth.php



    Out of 4 million jailbroken devices, 38% had a least one pirated app. What is more interesting is the number of jailbroken devices, which is fairly low. So if under half of those people are stealing apps, the problem may be low enough not to worry about but still high enough to make theft a motivation for a significant portion of the jailbreakers.



    Flurry reported 10% of their tracked devices were jailbroken.



    You could be talking about 20 million jailbroken devices and just under 10 million people stealing apps. Overall, this doesn't seem like a big problem but could still lead to the developers of certain apps seeing a 90% theft ratio.
  • Reply 142 of 145
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    It's a couple of years old but here's some evidence to suggest there's a fairly high percentage of jailbreakers stealing:



    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...u_buy_myth.php



    Out of 4 million jailbroken devices, 38% had a least one pirated app. What is more interesting is the number of jailbroken devices, which is fairly low. So if under half of those people are stealing apps, the problem may be low enough not to worry about but still high enough to make theft a motivation for a significant portion of the jailbreakers.



    Flurry reported 10% of their tracked devices were jailbroken.



    You could be talking about 20 million jailbroken devices and just under 10 million people stealing apps. Overall, this doesn't seem like a big problem but could still lead to the developers of certain apps seeing a 90% theft ratio.



    Less than half is a far cry from the posters who claim that jail breaking is synonymous with stealing, or 100% or those jail breakers are using stolen apps. .Maybe it's the name "jailbreak" that these posters can't escape. IOW, "only criminals would break out of jail" but they aren't seeing the bigger picture. How many are jailbreaking just so they can do the software unlock? Maybe we it would be perceived differently if it was just called "rooting the device."
  • Reply 143 of 145
    stuffestuffe Posts: 394member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    Yeah, any verification step needs to be remote but another option that's interesting is the one some apps on Steam use. I think it's been cracked already but it still makes things more difficult as you have to do it yourself for every app. It's called custom executable generation (CEG) and for every app that gets installed, it compiles an executable just for your account:



    Yeah, I think you can't stop these things from getting cracked eventually. They key to me, comes from a phrase I learned in my first job on a course I was sent on. "Step 1, define the problem". We are starting from a platform of "Piracy must be stopped" and diving straight into methods of solving it, most of which stand no chance of working for more than a couple of weeks.



    Step 1: Define the problem - in this case it means measuring the rate of piracy. The checksum methods etc, if done in such a way as to be entirely irrelevant to the pirate, would help stat up the problem with proper date and cut through most of the crap people spout. If the pirate game is still playable, I can't see people hunting out the reporting code and disabling it to hide their tracks.
  • Reply 144 of 145
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    Apple takes 30% of every sale ($2.5b paid out, $1b kept). If people steal the apps, they lose money too - this revenue keeps the store running. They stepped in when Lodsys were suing their developers so they should step in now and stop people stealing software.



    Most of Apple's costs for keeping the store running are variable not fixed. 20cents for credit card payment for example. Apps are not a profit centre for Apple, not the way they are for Playstation. Games drive hardware sales for Apple, for Sony it's the other way around.
  • Reply 145 of 145
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stuffe View Post


    Step 1: Define the problem - in this case it means measuring the rate of piracy. The checksum methods etc, if done in such a way as to be entirely irrelevant to the pirate, would help stat up the problem with proper date and cut through most of the crap people spout. If the pirate game is still playable, I can't see people hunting out the reporting code and disabling it to hide their tracks.



    Yes, it could be done in a way that is secretive and track piracy - it may already be in place. This way, the App Store ids (or even phone numbers) of pirates could be traced and Apple can determine if it's worth acting on it.
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