
"My iOS app is being pirated. Over 90% haven't paid for it. What can I do?" - loy22
http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/hs5y5/my_ios_app_is_being_pirated_to_the_point_where/
======
patio11
Let me condense the conversation for you: Blah blah blah, free marketing, blah
blah blah, wouldn't have bought it anyway, blah blah blah, DRM never works.

Then you move your code to the server and this never bothers you again. This
defeats piracy so well it _works in China_.

~~~
asdkfj9876
when did you turn into such a know-it-all patio? All I see from you is
arrogant one liners for the last few months.

It's been interesting seeing how your (modest) success has turned you into an
asshole - shame really.

~~~
melvinram
Patios statement was that moving to SaaS model removes piracy.

I see no asshole-ish nature and I'd bet it's 100% on the money, though I've
never sold downloadables so I can't speak from experience.

Let's stay above name calling. We're all adults here.

~~~
ewald
And how could he move into SaaS? It's a simple game, not a business app.

I think patio's advice doesn't help at all in this particular case.

------
rkalla
In other piracy discussions I've always viewed piracy as organic-marketing.

Meaning if you wanted to nurture the piracy (e.g. no DRM, easier install
paths, etc.) you would probably get your software in the hands of more people
and just redirect what you would have spent on marketing to keeping it in the
bank and track the piracy as marketing costs.

I'll admit that is a rosy way to look at it, but I'm definitely one of those
"The people that pirate your software, never would have bought it in the first
place" believers.

Look at Windows, remember when 95/XP had 96% domination of the world's
computers? That only started to come down when they got draconian with their
DRM/activation/genuine windows/etc. I saw about half my friends move to
Mac/Linux in that move (techie crowd) and I have to imagine they likely moved
friends/family to their new platform of choice in the process.

The people that were never going to be their customers went looking elsewhere
for alternatives.

Imagine how many of those pirated copies of Windows ran legit copies of Office
or IIS (or any Windows-specific software) that were paid for as the result of
the machine operating in a Windows-only environment.

Them Microsoft clamped down on those users and squeezed them all out of the
eco-system completely. No ancillary sales anymore from those folks; they are
now permanent customers of other platforms.

It seems to me that if you can accept that your software will be pirated up-
front, you can get some mileage out of it.

Put a mechanism in your game to check for announcements on a web server and
display them. Maybe your game is 90% pirated, but when you released your NEXT
game (or piece of software) you are suddenly announcing the release to 9x the
audience you would have had if it wasn't pirated so heavily.

You suddenly have direct access to all those customers that didn't cost you
Google Adwords money or SEO to find. They already like what you do, they
pirated your game.

I really see this as an opportunity for this guy (and anyone facing the issue)
if you stop thinking about every pirated copy as a lost sale... just like I
wouldn't think of every egg I eat in the morning as a chicken I murdered.

They were never your customers and those eggs were never full-grown chickens.

~~~
teamonkey
> I'm definitely one of those "The people that pirate your software, never
> would have bought it in the first place" believers.

I think that's only true for _X%_ of the people who pirate. Pro-piracy groups
like to assume X=100% (that people who pirate would never be persuaded to
purchase a copy), anti-piracy groups assume that X=0% (that _every_ pirate can
be persuaded to purchase a copy). The truth is that X is probably somewhere in
between.

Unfortunately there's no public data about what X really is, or even anything
that could narrow down the range a little bit.

~~~
Goladus
> The truth is that X is probably somewhere in between.

X depends a lot on the particular piece of software, the target market, and
the context in which it's available. There won't ever be any generalized data.

One interesting test would be to offer an app for a ridiculously low price,
like $0.01 and see how many people don't bother to pay even that.

~~~
Vivtek
A dollar _is_ a ridiculously low price, really. (Not that you're wrong.)

~~~
Goladus
I would say that depends on the App. And of course, my point is that from the
point of a consumer $1 is still enough to be perceived as being worth
something (a snack or a bottled drink, perhaps).

------
schrototo
Judging from the other comments here this may be a surprisingly unpopular
opinion, but if you're pirating an app that costs _one fucking dollar_ you
should be ashamed of yourself.

~~~
mdolon
I'm not arguing for or against piracy but keep in mind that even at one dollar
these apps can easily add up to a lot. My younger sister, for example, wants
to download every cool looking app that she sees in the app store, be it
useful or not. Add to that the huge influx of crappy $.99 apps that are not
worth even a penny and you have enough incentive for people, especially
teenagers with limited budgets, to pirate these cheap apps.

I think in order to solve the problem, it's important to see and understand
all sides of the equation, even the ones we don't agree with.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
It's almost as if people can't have everything they want! How unfair!

------
muhfuhkuh
I wonder. Since there are code snippets that can check to see if an app has
been cracked/pirated, perhaps there is a way to inject an overlay serving ads
on those who pirated. They can't exactly write a negative review on itunes
because you can't rate an app unless you've purchased it.

~~~
yoda_sl
It's always the same game of cat & mouse with pirates.

Most pirates on iOS are simply using one of the free tool and don't go far
beyond that. I have implemented a technique for detecting pirated app and used
it now in many apps: since then the piracy rate went down to zero which
convinced that most pirates on iOS are simply using a tool and don't know what
to do if the app they try to crack fail.

I am sure that a true pirate will find way to bypass my security check but so
far after more that a year of implementing my solution in all my released app
I didn't find anymore pirated copy.

If anyone is interested to learn what can be done, send me an email.

~~~
nupark2
_> If anyone is interested to learn what can be done, send me an email._

Are you checking that the Mach-O binary is encrypted? I'm not aware of that
being worked around by any of the automated tools (and it an approach that is
widely discussed).

~~~
yoda_sl
That is one of the approach but I combine it with a few other useful ones.

------
jeffool
I'd like to point this out:

<http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy>

To quote:

 _The highest estimate I've seen is that 10% of worldwide iPhones are
jailbroken. Given that there are so few jailbroken phones, how can we explain
that 80% of game copies are pirated?

The answer is simple -- the average pirate downloads a lot more games than the
average customer buys. This means that even though games see that 80% of their
copies are pirated, only 10% of their potential customers are pirates, which
means they are losing at most 10% of their sales._

~~~
corin_
That logic doesn't actually add up, though.

Let's say 100 people own iphones, 10 of which are jailbroken. 9 of the
jailbroken phones have downloaded my game, and one of the 90 non-jailbroken
phones has paid for it. Maybe, if they couldn't download illegally, none of
the 9 would have bought it, meaning I have lost 0% of my sales. Or maybe all 9
would have bought it, meaning I have lost 90% of my sales.

It doesn't matter if only 10% of "potential" customers can download a game
illegally, it matters what % of _likely_ customers do it. And for some
developers that will be much higher than average, for others it will be much
lower.

~~~
jeffool
You're not wrong that "some customers are harder to sell to than others." But
that's a problem anyone trying to sell something faces.

Also worth noting is that he talks about the disproportionate number of games
pirated to games sold across the board. What can you take from that? That
pirates are far more likely to pirate a larger number of games than customers
will buy.

That's hard to prove, but if there are really that many more pirates in so
many games, it certainly makes sense.

------
dendory
Wait, 90% of users pirating it? I just don't buy it. How many iPhone users
jailbreak their phones? 5%? less probably? So those few users are 90% of your
user base? These numbers just don't seem right. I would bet the real reason he
saw a peak of traffic is something else. He bases his conclusions on how many
people click a button, which presumably loads a URL on his server. It could be
something as stupid as Google having found the hidden url somehow and indexed
it.

~~~
skidooer
I estimate 90% of the people who use my app have pirated it. That is based on
server communication with the app that would not be easily duplicated by
outside sources like Google crawlers. There is some margin of error: Each
purchased copy is able to be installed on up to five devices, for example. But
I find it to be still fairly telling.

What is more interesting is that I noticed a dramatic drop in sales when it
started to be distributed on the pirate websites. I'm not quite sure what to
make of that, but it does give some indication that piracy did affect me.

For what it is worth, my app appeals to the geek crowd. From the data I have
been able to acquire, I would say the majority of my users, including
legitimate ones, are running jailbroken devices. That may help skew the piracy
rates towards the higher end.

Ultimately, I'm not worried about it. I wasn't banking my livelihood on the
success of the app. It has made enough money to recoup my time investment,
which is an added bonus. I do feel for the users who did pay for my app,
however. I do feel that piracy has prevented me from spending more time making
the product better for them. That is the real unfortunate side.

------
gfodor
There actually is a way to avoid piracy of iOS apps: build an app that
requires server-side computation/algorithms of some sort and combine that with
the signed receipt capability of in-app purchases. Basically this makes it
possible for you to be sure that only a single user of your application is
using a single in-app purchase at a time, by validating the signature each
time the user launches the app with Apple.

------
Gilpo
Learn from this. Piracy offers valuable lessons to the budding entrepreneurial
programmer. You learn about: consumer behavior, the nature of black markets,
iOS piracy tools and techniques.

Quick story: A friend of mine, Carl Lydon, created www.chamberofchat.com,
which is an 3D chat-room for Harry Potter Fans that became popular in the
early 2000s. This chat-room was promptly infiltrated by a nefarious hacker who
assigned himself moderator status and began spewing filth, casting elimination
spells, and harassing innocent chatters. At first Carl freaked out but got a
hold of himself and re-built a few key modules of his multiplayer log-in code.
By the end, the hacker went away, and Carl learned more about security than he
_ever_ could have from any one else. A gold-mine of lessons. A fine-art school
graduate, he now makes a fortune programming multiplayer online games. Piracy
is a gift.

(edit formatting)

------
Tycho
For a seond I thought he was selling a distributed denial of service attack
app. Anyway, avoid clicking this if you don't want to get into one of those
stupid 'piracy isn't stealing' arguments with people who make them totally po-
faced as if it hadn't been said ten million times already.

------
rawsyntax
Build a free version of your app. I suspect some of the pirates want to try
your app for free.

------
intended
This guy had made a bookmarklet for the same thing a short while back - I
think he showed it off on HN too. (not sure - haven't tried looking for the
link) You can get it out here - <http://erkie.github.com/>

------
agilo
This post and the attention it garnered will bring him more customers than
he'd hoped for (customers who will think about what he said, and maybe pitch
in that dollar). Whether it was intentional or not, it's a clever marketing
ploy I find.

------
crag
How are they pirating it.. unless they jail-break their phone?

I don't do iphone apps, but I was under the impression Apple controlled the
distribution?

~~~
ansy
I'm not sure if it works anymore. But with the App Store you can download on
anyone's device after you pay for it once. For example, I buy Angry Birds, and
then I log in on your phone and install Angry Birds on it as a free update.
Then I log out of your phone, and Angry Birds is still installed.

I didn't even know it was possible and I did iOS development. Then I saw
someone do it and had a WTF moment. He just said that's how everyone he knows
'shares' apps. One guy gets it, and downloads it on everyone else's phone.

~~~
adolph
The trick is that a particular iPhone can't run around to different people's
computers slurping the apps they bought on different iTunes accounts. It can
only sync with one computer/iTunes account.

For example, my spouse and I could use the same purchased apps (if we used the
same stuff) since we share a single iTunes account and library. I could not
sync with my next door neighbor and use all their apps at the same time as I
use my own.

~~~
ansy
I think we're describing different things. You're talking about syncing apps
with a computer. Sharing libraries between spouses and stuff like that.

I'm talking about this set of steps (on an iPhone/iPad):

1) Go to Settings App

2) Log out of iTunes

3) Log in as Person B

4) Launch App Store

5) Download an app that Person B previously bought. This is a free update.

6) Go to Settings

7) Sign out of Person B's iTunes account

8) Log back in as myself

9) Voila! Launch pirated app which is still on my device without having to
jailbreak my phone.

This of course doesn't allow me to update the app because it requires I login
as the other person. And yeah, I probably can't sync this rogue app to my
computer. But for games and most apps, this is enough. If an app is worth
pirating it's probably good enough without the updates. And I turn off app
sync because it's annoying. If I really lost my apps I'd just reinstall the
ones that mattered.

NB: I don't do this myself. I'm sure if there was a more 'secure' way without
being horrible Apple would have done it. Getting apps onto a device for
development was/is horrific.

~~~
Jach
Is Steam horrible? As far as I know you can log in as another account and
download games the other account has and play them, and if you log back into
your account the game data doesn't go anywhere (so if you buy you don't have
to redownload) but you can't launch them from the steam client. Why didn't
Apple do something similar?

------
junklight
you give away 9 copies to sell 1.

Perhaps you need to give more away and make it easier and then you'll sell
more?

------
iphoneedbot
ON A SIDE NOTE: <http://www.netdisaster.com/> did the exact thing but got
shutdown for Phishing. Isnt this the exact same thing?

------
TheAmazingIdiot
Sorry, bud. That's the cost of doing business in software.

Yeah, I guess you could dedicate tends of thousands of dollars to 'combat
piracy' or some such nonsense. But time an time again as indie creators find
out, you treat them kindly but otherwise ignore them.

Of course, that you're on Reddit and HN, you have breached the first barrier:
obscurity. If I had an iDevice, I'd try it out.

~~~
crag
I wish EA would figure that out. I won't buy another EA game because of their
DRM. Not so much that it has it. but it's garbage.

I was one of the idiots that brought a legal copy of Dragon Age 2. Only to be
locked out of my account (and game) for a 1/2 week due to the DRM.

------
whatswtlogin
Charge 99 cents and hope it goes viral!

~~~
tjarratt
The application already costs 99c and arguably the bookmarklet the author
created did go viral (to the point where I'm still having friends send me
links to the asteroids 'web site killer' every few days).

One question on my mind is whether the stats are legit. If it's not some quirk
in Apple's reporting system, maybe someone is maliciously hitting the link to
the 'site of the day'. Wonder what the logs for that webserver look like - is
every user agent an iOS device as expected?

I haven't spent much time digging into the iOS app pirating community, but my
expectation is that users are less likely to pirate if there's a free version
of the app. What exactly does prompt someone to crack a 99c app and make it
available to other users? Why would someone go through the trouble to get it
that way when it's so cheap?

~~~
crag
You will never win the fight. So chalk it up as cost of doing business.

And everything is pirated. I once had a friend of mine hand me a pirated copy
of the PDR (the Physicians Desk Reference on CD). I still have it.. though
it's out of date by now.

