I'm really concern about piracy. Someone have an ideia about how to block the game when running in a jailbreaked device. Or you think it's impossible?
What about an update with a folder and files search command? Searching and confirming the existence of folders of apps like "installous" its gonna be a great help to fight against piracy.
So, mates, let's think about this theme.

I think it's inpossible for the divice to know that it's jailbroken, at least with AGK

Don't waist your time on this. The piracy rate is 90 to 95% for ios apps. There is no cure for this.

You only have access to DOCUMENTS directory on iOs. you cannot search system files or anything outside your program sandbox.

First you have to ask yourself: will my app be so good that it will be pirated? if it's so good, then implement in-app purchase. that's the best way to lower piracy right now

Funny. If I were making an iphone game, I would probably only offer it to jailbroken devices and sell it myself

Searching and confirming the existence of folders of apps like "installous" its gonna be a great help to fight against piracy.

It wouldn't be a lot of effort for an experienced 'hacker' to simply remove that check.

Attempting to ban Piracy is just going to cause more issues to the fair users. Haven't we learned that from crappy DRMs yet? And they get hacked/cracked either way. So in the end it's a lot of money and costumers wasted.

I agree.
Piracy is something we can't avoid.
I read a lot about this topic and in majority, indie developers are happy to having their apps pirate, 'cause it's like a symbol of success for a indie.
Well, the question is you're developing for money or for name.
I'm trying to take advantage of both. I'm preparing a lecture about this topic and game developing and use this to create a consulting firm.
Like our friend 'Jerico2day' says, you can take advantage of jailbreak, or you can curse steve jobs.

So, whatever way you go, good luck to you.
This is something we need discuss once in a while.

Well, the question is you're developing for money or for name.

Neither, it's a silly hobby of mine.

yea i forgot the hobbyists. But the hobbyist class is out of the topic about piracy. So, I should've said "the question is you're developing for money, for name or for fun."

I have my doubts about this 90-95% rate. There are reports saying 50%, others saying 100:1, so it is probably variable based on the app popularity and other factors we simply cannot know.

I have an opinion about that, which is not based on actual data. The rates are high just because when you jailbreak your device and use pirate apps, you'll get and install more apps than you can use or are actually interested. Sometimes just doing that out of curiosity.

What I mean is that if you have 1000 downloads, and only 100 are from legitimate ways, it doesn't mean you lost 900 sales. It doesn't mean you would sell 1000 if your app were 100% piracy-protected (which is impossible, btw). This is why I think the 95% piracy rate, if accurate is not real.

My conclusion is: don't bother. Use all the time you would spend on anti-piracy measures doing another game instead. All effort to protect your app will be hacked after 30 seconds anyway, so it is better using your precious time doing a lot of games

Cheers

I agree with you (mobilecreator).
I really want to know the real numbers. There 2 example cases about this: Tiny Wings and FingerKicks. They say Tiny Wings has sold 2 millions, but based in game center stats. The developer of FingerKicks said the legitimate sales was 1163 copies but in game center at least 15,950 being played, something like 91%. If Tiny Wings had same stats, 91% is 180,000 copies. In my opinion 180,000 its not a bad number, but creating a 'Tiny Wings' is the most dificult part.

You think 95% is to high? Look here:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?23669-Confirmed-98-piracy-ratio&highlight=piracy

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?26728-My-personal-stats-about-piracy-96&highlight=piracy

Even if it is lower, it is a waist of time to fight it. Create a MMO, then you are safe!

Maybe another solution is offer for free and use ads. Or wait for an in-app purchase solution for Agk.

well first off those are pc games not ios.. though i seriously doubt its anywhere near that high, i've seen some developers posts other places that claimed there piracy rate was in the high 80 percentage.

most look at the downloads and purchases and say hmm i sold 2 but it was downloaded 10 times.. what they fail to realize is that i can buy a game and download from apple to any device i own. i often will download it to my main pc from itunes, then go to my wife's and download it to her pc from itunes, then download it to my development mac system. why because its good to backup stuff i don't trust the cloud crap to store stuff, its so knew and have already experienced lost files. .. but anyways, she has a iphone, i have a iphone she has a ipad 2, i have a ipad 2, and a ipad 1, 2 of our 4 kids have ipod touches, so if it was downloaded for every single device, thats 10 downloads for 1 purchase... i mean its convenient to download who wants to sync all those devices?? that would be a but whipping. but lets say at the very least someone buys it from their phone then at some point downloads it via itunes to their pc. i think that that is very common, since even a non power user in family members like mom, aunt uncle cousins commonly do this. at the very least people would see 1/1


as for the ones claiming through code they have signups. well whats to stop the same scenario i can buy once, then all 4 of my kids can make there own account, as well as the wife and i so you get 6 signups on one purchase, since we only have one account in our family.. people forget about this kind of stuff and just assume there game was pirated, i know pirating happens, but unless your game is good, it wont be pirated much anyways, and if it is that good, your still going to sell a but load anyways...


though on the other side i always see people complaining its high and how they have code to detect if the phones jailbroke or not,, so usually curiosity gets the best of me so i may buy the game, and id say 9 out of 10 times, the game is so jr, i seriously doubt they have the programming skills to do what they suggest. why would i say that because 9 out of 10 just launching em and playing them for a few minutes while plugged into the mac, from the iphone config utility on the console screen and through xcodes organizer, you can see so many mem leaks it makes your head hurt that apple allows that on their store.. theres no way a seasoned developer who would have the know how to detect if it was jailbroke or not would have so many mem leaks and as many crashes as the 9 out of 10 ones ive tested. but not all are that bad, some seem well programmed from the mem leak and crash prevention point of view..

apple knows that most of the games do have huge memory leaks, hence why xcode with ios5 will attempt to cure the bad programmers issues. by trying to release the memory for them...

but anyways,, now my speal is over ;0 i doubt most games get anywhere near even 20 percent pirated ratio, and believe the most popular games may possibly get ~50ish percent, but don't think it is much higher otherwise they wouldn't still be on the charts at top week after week after week, for months on end.

A few things to consider :

* Make the game free and just sell In-App purchases.
* Make the game free and use Ads. Rovio's makes approx $1mil each month from the Ad version of Angry Birds - of course don't expect numbers as high as theirs.
* Use piracy as an advantage to get more exposure (or sampling) to your game and company to help you in the long run. Consider Team Meat's view on piracy and how it somehow helped them with their highly successful Super Meat Boy.

In-App purchases will get you a letter from Lodsys at the moment.

The best way to combat this is if TGC implemented a check for the SignerIdentity key. For a game to run off a jail broken device this key must be removed from the App for it to run. Put code in to detect if the key is present or not and ether display the game if the key is present or a warning screen if it isn't.
While this will probably block most of the kiddies out there, it won't stop the ones that actually go through the pain staking process of de-compiling your code to get around this check.

In-App purchases will get you a letter from Lodsys at the moment.

Not only that. Links to full versions and other apps too and also displaying Ads is covered by one of their patents. They go after big and also small devs. But I would not worry about it too much. If you get the letter, then get a license. If not, you are lucky.

So is Lodsys checking every new single submission in the appstore?

Lodsys is a patent troll and should rot where this dude rule ->

They exist only to sue and demand lisence money from anyone who dare use some software that remotely work like the badly defined patents they bought from a patent sale... They are like the mob who demand money for protection... should be illegal.