Square Enix changes stance, will remove 'Deus Ex: The Fall' jailbreak restriction
Square Enix, publisher of iOS action role-playing game Deus Ex, has decided to remove an in-game limitation that would disable a user's ability to fire a weapon if the title was installed on a jailbroken device.
Screenshot taken from jailbroken iOS device.
It was reported Thursday that Square Enix's Deus Ex: The Fall, an extension of the company's popular Deus Ex franchise, instituted a restriction that would disallow players with jailbroken iOS devices from shooting guns, effectively hobbling the game.
The company apparently had a change of heart, and plans to reinstate the crucial feature in a forthcoming update.
Gamers noted that the publisher didn't state the limitation on the app's download page, and would only be shown the above warning message after purchasing and opening the title.
Square issued the following statement to Eurogamer:
Screenshot taken from jailbroken iOS device.
It was reported Thursday that Square Enix's Deus Ex: The Fall, an extension of the company's popular Deus Ex franchise, instituted a restriction that would disallow players with jailbroken iOS devices from shooting guns, effectively hobbling the game.
The company apparently had a change of heart, and plans to reinstate the crucial feature in a forthcoming update.
Gamers noted that the publisher didn't state the limitation on the app's download page, and would only be shown the above warning message after purchasing and opening the title.
Square issued the following statement to Eurogamer:
As of this writing, Deus Ex: The Fall has yet to be updated, though a new warning regarding the restriction has been added to the app's description. The title can be purchased from the App Store for $7.We have not been clear in our communication earlier this week when we launched Deus Ex: The Fall. We did not state clearly that the game would not support jailbroken devices and so we will be switching this off via an update, so that all the supported iOS devices will be able to play the game in the near future."
"We feel it's the right thing to do in this situation and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. No customer should be out of pocket when we were not clear from the start, so we'll get the game updated as soon as possible so that everyone who wants to play Deus Ex: The Fall can do regardless of whether their device is jailbroken or not. As soon as this update is live we will communicate this via the Eidos Montreal Community channels.?
Comments
I still think that most jailbreakers pirate games. Not many people are going to post and say, yes, I jailbreak my device and i pirate games.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrENGLISH(TM)
Just because someone jailbreaks their iDevice, it doesn't mean they pirate games. I'd be upset if I bought this game and couldn't play it because my iDevices are jailbroken. It would be completely different if they actually were able to detect that the game was pirated. Then I could see the justification of their original intent.
True, you can't generalise, however there's a related trend and you can't discuss this away nowadays anymore. This was easy when iOS was much more limited, locked to exclusive carriers in most countries, etc. Now it's not anymore and thus the geeky few, who jailbreak for being allowed to SSH to their phone or whatever other reasons, remain a minority.
These days, many people jailbreak for the major purpose of installing cracked apps. And I'm being completely honest here, most people I meet with jailbroken devices, start showing off some of their cracked apps once you start a conversation.
Either way, naturally paying customers shouldn't be put at a disadvantage here and hence this was the right move. However, at the same time I believe that while stating so, locking out jailbreak users could be a good way forward for developers. I have been toying around with this idea for a while now and been wondering why it is still so uncommon, although there are some signs of change on the horizon.
As to why they do this over other forms of copy protection is pretty simple: It is very easy to reliably detect jailbroken devices. It is not so easy to implement halfway reliable piracy detection that actually lasts longer than 10 minutes through more penetrant attacks than those crack-it-yourself website tools. So while it is more or less simple for good crackers to disable piracy detection mechanism or modifying the app bundle in such a way as not to trigger it, there are ways of detecting jailbreaks, crackers just can't do too much about.
Essentially, I believe we should all understand developers trying to protect themselves. We wouldn't want to end up like Android did and have adverts and collection of private data in every app, would we?
Quote:
Originally Posted by cynic
True, you can't generalise, however there's a related trend and you can't discuss this away nowadays anymore. This was easy when iOS was much more limited, locked to exclusive carriers in most countries, etc. Now it's not anymore and thus the geeky few, who jailbreak for being allowed to SSH to their phone or whatever other reasons, remain a minority.
These days, many people jailbreak for the major purpose of installing cracked apps. And I'm being completely honest here, most people I meet with jailbroken devices, start showing off some of their cracked apps once you start a conversation.
Either way, naturally paying customers shouldn't be put at a disadvantage here and hence this was the right move. However, at the same time I believe that while stating so, locking out jailbreak users could be a good way forward for developers. I have been toying around with this idea for a while now and been wondering why it is still so uncommon, although there are some signs of change on the horizon.
As to why they do this over other forms of copy protection is pretty simple: It is very easy to reliably detect jailbroken devices. It is not so easy to implement halfway reliable piracy detection that actually lasts longer than 10 minutes through more penetrant attacks than those crack-it-yourself website tools. So while it is more or less simple for good crackers to disable piracy detection mechanism or modifying the app bundle in such a way as not to trigger it, there are ways of detecting jailbreaks, crackers just can't do too much about.
Essentially, I believe we should all understand developers trying to protect themselves. We wouldn't want to end up like Android did and have adverts and collection of private data in every app, would we?
There are a few methods to install pirated apps on iOS devices without jailbreaking. It is possible to side-load apps with iExplorer, or worse yet, visit an illegal app distribution store on your iOS device. So blocking the app from working on jailbroken devices is not necessarily the solution to prevent piracy.
" there are ways of detecting jailbreaks, crackers just can't do too much about."
Not sure that's strictly correct..... Surely any checks for jailbreaks can be removed / nullified in exactly the same way a piracy check is. It's just code checking something to be true or false.
That they don't actually accept it on public internet forums (obviously they are not going to do that) is another thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrENGLISH(TM)
Just because someone jailbreaks their iDevice, it doesn't mean they pirate games. ...
No, but it does mean that you have a very, very high probability of being a person who pirates games. It's literally the number one reason people jailbreak.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JBFromOZ
the only thing copy protection does is annoy legitimate users. anyone who wants to crack a game can and will. there is no magic to stop this.
Except we aren't talking about copy protection and your statement is illogical anyway. Clearly it would annoy the criminal, and be the reason they "cracked" the game at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton
FFS. How about limiting the game difficulty setting to "cakewalk" for jail breakers? Then they could play the whole game, see all the media, and can't complain they didn't get their money's worth?
It would be the same complaint, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Negafox
It either was that, or deal with mass legitimate refunds.
It's a good PR move, but that's all it is. I doubt there would be "mass" refunds considering jailbreaking is not mainstream any more and most jail breakers are in fact criminals. There are some that are "legitimate" of course and out of that small group there is another smaller sub-group of people who bought the game. Out of that group, some other smaller sub-group would have asked for a refund.
All in all, the money they would be refunding would most likely be a lot less than the money they are losing from people who pirate the game.
I don't play many games myself so I don't really care, but I do think it's too bad that everyone who creates a game for iOS has to figure on a not insignificant loss from the fairly large group of people who will steal it, and that there is currently nothing that can be done about such people. Crime is crime, thievery is thievery. There should be some sort of downside to stealing games and it's sad that there isn't IMO.
Sadly, I must agree. Mine wasn't a very good idea.
I used to jailbreak all the time back in the early days. Yes, the jailbreaking scene has become more associated with pirating than installing tweaks. But that doesn't mean there aren't people like me who like to jailbreak for the soul purpose of installing tweaks. I'm currently on Straight Talk and jailbreaking allows me to edit my APN settings so I can get MMS working properly with my Straight Talk at&t sim. I could care less about pirating apps. Majority of the iOS apps are either free or cheap, there is no reason for me personally to pirate them. You don't even need to be jailbroken to install pirated apps. Many of the websites that sell UDID registrations also offer an alternative method for installing cracked apps.
and I actually gave up my 6.1.2 jailbreak and APN settings tweak so that I could test iOS 7 - something I do every year. If I cared about running cracked apps, I would never give up my jailbreak.
iOS and the community owes a lot to the jailbreak scene. So many tweaks that used to be jailbreak only have made their way over to stock iOS. And it is because of that, I still support jailbreak scene.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
It's a good PR move, but that's all it is. I doubt there would be "mass" refunds considering jailbreaking is not mainstream any more and most jail breakers are in fact criminals. There are some that are "legitimate" of course and out of that small group there is another smaller sub-group of people who bought the game. Out of that group, some other smaller sub-group would have asked for a refund.
All in all, the money they would be refunding would most likely be a lot less than the money they are losing from people who pirate the game.
I don't play many games myself so I don't really care, but I do think it's too bad that everyone who creates a game for iOS has to figure on a not insignificant loss from the fairly large group of people who will steal it, and that there is currently nothing that can be done about such people. Crime is crime, thievery is thievery. There should be some sort of downside to stealing games and it's sad that there isn't IMO.
Was jailbreaking ever "mainstream" among iOS users? If most people don't jailbreak these days, how would the jailbreakers cause major financial losses? Does the game's intended audience overlap substantially with the jailbreak community?
not being able to play a game on jailbroken system - copy protection.
fixing said copy protection so you can play on a jailbroken system - cracking. (made available to everyone who downloads cracked product onto their jailbroken machine)
number one source of entertainment for hackers - cracking shit people say can't be cracked. inconvenienced? no. entertained? yes.
only person inconvenienced by copy protection - legitimate owner. "i dont jailbreak to copy games"
hope this clarifies it a bit for you.
What were those assholes thinking...
Quote:
Originally Posted by cynic
True, you can't generalise, however there's a related trend and you can't discuss this away nowadays anymore. [snip]
Sorry, but you really don't know what you're talking about. Piracy seems to be down overall for iOS apps. I say this because so many piracy repositories have shut down. Even Installuous shut down stating lack of interest. Meanwhile jailbreaking is at an all-time high. There are a record number of tweaks, themes and apps in Cydia. While iOS has incorporated many features that were jailbreak features only before, the development of additional features has increased considerably.
"These days, many people jailbreak for the major purpose of installing cracked apps." Citation? Why would this be true if you don't need to jailbreak to pirate apps? If all you wanted to do was pirate apps, it would be easier not to bother with jailbreaking.
"And I'm being completely honest here, most people I meet with jailbroken devices, start showing off some of their cracked apps once you start a conversation"
Really, because I don't know a single person who pirates apps anymore. I used to, but everyone I know who used to pirate apps quite doing it because it wasn't worth it. It was worth paying to get apps updated easily and not worth bothering for apps they didn't really want.
I don't think you know many jailbreakers, or if you do, you know a skewed subset. Have you asked those pirates if they'd still pirate if they couldn't jailbreak? Since you don't have to jailbreak to pirate, I would guess they would still pirate.
But if you really want to see what people are doing with jailbreaking, go to the biggest community on the net and see what they're talking about:
http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/
Rarely does the subject of piracy come up, and when it does, people usually jump on the person who did.
"locking out jailbreak users could be a good way forward for developers. I have been toying around with this idea for a while now and been wondering why it is still so uncommon,"
It's uncommon because it doesn't work. You can pirate apps without jailbreaking, and even cheat in games by editing plist files without jailbreaking. The biggest issue though is the developers are saying, don't buy the app if you're jailbroken, leaving those people to say, "ok, well, then I'll pirate it".
"It is very easy to reliably detect jailbroken devices."
No, it's not. Name one app that does this. Many have tried, and all, including Deus Ex have failed on the "reliably" part. Really, the article that Apple Insider posted earlier could've read, "If you haven't already updated xCon in a while, you might want do so before buying this game".
"there are ways of detecting jailbreaks, crackers just can't do too much about."
Sorry, but you really don't know what you're talking about. Clearly you don't, and you're wrong about your thoughts on jailbreaking. Why don't you spend a little time at r/jailbreak and learn a thing or two?
"Essentially, I believe we should all understand developers trying to protect themselves. "
As a developer myself, I totally agree, however the developers of this app were terribly misguided when they thought this would do anything at all to deter piracy and instead just piss off paying customers and actually add incentive for people to pirate their app.