Devs; protect your apps from piracy!

Funny, it's from rip rev and they're the ones who run installer.app on jailbroken phones. Kinda ironic if you ask me.

 

Eventually someone will crack it or find a way around it and release it to the masses, then devs will be losing money by paying rip dev everytime their app gets a sale, plus the fact that their sales will drop because the app will get cracked. Once this happens, if rip dev continues their current streak, they will update it every 3 months or so to patch the crack, only to let it be cracked again. Plus, just because they say their apps haven't been cracked doesn't mean it's true. Everyone can lie. Hell, I've never even heard of an app store application that they've made. Maybe that's why (if they're not lying) they've never been cracked, because no one has heard of them.

 

Their solution is serverside. Sounds like a very very very bad idea for anyone to use their system.

 

No matter what 'Anti Piracy Method' there is, it will get cracked eventually. It's vain to try it in the first place.

That does not mean that i support piracy at all, but it's a simple fact, that there will always be a 'workaround' in some way. Just a matter of time how long it takes to find the exploit. So i'd say safe up on that cash and hope for the best that people are genuine enough to actually pay for Apps.

 

$100 up front and then up to 5% royalty on your earnings as well? Seems a little greedy. It might not be so bad if it weren't for the fact that the other widely publicized methods for protecting your app from piracy appear to be working just as well (ie no cracks), and they're free and take 5 minutes to implement.

No thanks.

 

Some are, but far too few of them. Piracy doesn't hurt those who are doing well, but those that aren't.

 

Server side authentication is nothing new. It also restricts your apps to the iPhone (with a data plan) and iPod Touch only when it's on WiFi. No local play = bad reviews = poor sales. (Online multiplayer games excepted.)

And yes, that, too, will be cracked at some point. The battle against pirates, and the battle of pirates against protection schemes, has been going on since protection schemes existed. Care to take a wager on who wins every. single. time? Show me a single copy protection scheme that hasn't been broken.

Not that I'm advocating piracy. I've been a developer before and I'm about to be one again; naturally my vested interests lean against piracy. But I prefer to take a more pragmatic view of the eternal digital struggle. It's simple: Screw it. I'm not going to waste my time developing some convoluted copy protection scheme thinking I'm clever because I know damn well that it doesn't matter what I do. It will be cracked. Always. Every time. What can be done can be undone. They know it, and I know it. I'd be deluding myself if I thought it was otherwise.

So, screw it. Let 'em pirate my stuff. Will I lose sales? A few, maybe. The fence sitters who might have ponied up had they no other choice, perhaps. The rest? They wouldn't have bought anyway. They're the greedy ones, the "I do because I can" people who don't give a damn. I can't count them as lost sales because they never had the potential to be sales in the first place. Counting them as lost sales is just pulling numbers out of my ass to spread FUD about the supposedly tragic losses piracy incurs.

Yes, I do have an ethical problem with pirates -- a huge ethical problem with them. I'd rather they didn't have what they didn't pay for, and none of their "justifications" (I've heard them all) are worth a toss. But nothing I do will stop them from pirating stuff, and nothing I say will change their minds. It's a cold, hard pill to swallow, but it's the naked truth.