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The Fall jams your gun on jailbroken iOS devices
- rdl 13y agoHow do you detect a jailbroken device from software? Presumably someone could just patch that, but maybe that's a bit beyond what most people want to do.
- danielamitay 13y agoThe software simply attempts to read the device's root folder. Success == Jailbroken. Piracy detection involves checking the app executable's compile time, permissions and similar. The methods change from time to time, but that is basically the gist.
- samweinberg 13y agoThere are quite a few different ways a Jailbroken device can be detected. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/413242/how-do-i-detect-that-an-sdk-app-is-running-on-a-jailbroken-phone http://stackoverflow.com/questions/413242/how-do-i-detect-th...
- angrydev 13y agoMore anti-consumer crap from SquareEnix. It's really a shame they are hellbent on running their fantastic franchises into the ground.
- venomsnake 13y agoBecause there is someone of the big publisher that is consumer friendly? Only indies seem to treat their customers with respect. That is why I buy all bundles for at least a buck even if I have the games already.
- samweinberg 13y agoLegally purchase a $7 app and get screwed by the DRM. Pirate a $7 app and subvert the DRM using a Jailbreak tweak like xCon. It seems that this only hurts the legitimate users, as others will still be able to pirate the app.
- britta 13y agoJust to clarify what xCon does: it's intended for use with legally-purchased App Store apps that refuse to work correctly on jailbroken devices - xCon tricks those apps into thinking that they're running on non-jailbroken devices. So yes, the gun-jamming hurts legitimate users, but those legitimate users can use xCon to work around it. Here's some more documentation: http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/XCon http://theiphonewiki.com/wiki/XCon
- cheeze 13y agoWhy would I want to support a developer that treats me as a criminal off the bat? I might as well be a criminal and just pirate it at that point... Self fulfilling prophecies at work.
- flyosity 13y agoSo if someone buys the app legitimately from the App Store with a jailbroken phone, they'll still get this popup? That's pretty ridiculous. This isn't about stopping piracy or shaming pirates, it's a blanket accusation that all iPhone owners who jailbreak their phones are thieves.
- mikeash 13y agoYeah, that's terrible. I'm all for anti-piracy measures that mess with the app when it's pirated, but to assume that "jailbroken" means "pirated" is dumb. I've jailbroken several iOS devices and never pirated any iOS software. You can pirate iOS software without jailbreaking.
- gcr 13y agoHow? Wouldn't that require an Apple developer account?
- mikeash 13y agoYes, but each account can put apps on a hundred devices. You can buy signing keys for a single iOS device for a few bucks from shady people with developer accounts who are selling their device slots off one by one.
- conradev 13y agoAnd even worse is when these pirates get their hands on enterprise certificates - where they are not limited to 100 devices… http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/01/01/low-down-dirty-iphone-app-pirates/ http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/01/01/low-down-dirty-iphone...
- Amadou 13y agoThis is the problem with "detecting" piracy - it is super-easy to get it wrong and start punishing legit customers. Any developer who makes the decision to punish pirates risks losing paying customers. How many lost paying customers is it worth it to punish people who have never and very likely will never give you a dollar?
- cobrausn 13y agoIt looks like they decided to patch this 'feature' out of the game. http://kotaku.com/patch-will-give-jailbroken-deus-ex-players-the-ability-757580067 http://kotaku.com/patch-will-give-jailbroken-deus-ex-players...
- davidgerard 13y ago"We're sorta sorry we got caught."
- Zikes 13y agoThey will be releasing an update to remove this: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/12/deus-ex-the-fall-update-will-unjam-guns-on-jailbroken-ios-devic/ http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/12/deus-ex-the-fall-update-wi...
- Zikes 13y agoTheir wording bugs me, as they show no remorse except that they did not make this particular restriction known to people before they bought the game. Essentially they're saying it would have been okay if they'd told everyone up front, even though it's still tantamount to calling all those who jailbreak their phones a thieving pirate.
- reginaldo 13y agoI thought it was quite good, comparing tho most company statements I see. They even used the word apologize. Most companies do not use such wording as it might imply admission of guilt. That's why you see regret instead of apologize in a lot of company issued statements...
- flyosity 13y agoMy guess is an idiot product manager conflated "jailbroken" with "stole the app" and thought the feature would be a good one.
- ajross 13y agoProduct managers don't implement features. Someone coded and tested this too, and somehow the communication process didn't get far enough to stop it. That's more than one dumb middle manager.
- ctdonath 13y agoGiven what one can do when trusting a walled garden, and can't without, is there some reasonable concern critics overlook? Say, apps having access to other apps' data could unfairly modify cached user data, frustrating legitimate multiplayer gameplay? i.e.: write an app which auto-maximizes all player capability stats? To wit: cheats may become easy to perpetrate and hard to block when full sandbox access is not prevented.
- mikeash 13y agoYou can access app data with a USB cable and the right PC software. Cheating is already rampant in many games and it doesn't require jailbreaking.
- loki540 13y agoThis seems like a really good way to invite a lot of 1-star reviews from angry players with jailbroken phones...
- ricardobeat 13y agoA ridiculous attempt to prevent piracy? Jailbroken != pirated.
- rocky1138 13y agoIf they hadn't fixed this with a patch, I could see a class action lawsuit on the horizon for fraud. You can't sell something as working when it is not.
- rcfox 13y agoOn the other hand, the developers built the game with the assumption that you'd be playing on the basis of a standard set of software. If you change that software, the assumption is broken. I wonder if the TOS says anything about agreeing to not play on jail-broken devices...
- chid 13y agoIt is included in the description. Please be aware, the Deus Ex: The Fall play experience is currently restricted on jail broken devices. Do not purchase if you have voided your warranty and have Jail broken your device. I'm not sure whether that's exactly fraudulent (equivalent for people not reading what devices an app supports and purchasing it)
- 83457 13y agoDoes anyone know if this is a shooting optional stealth game? In other words, essentially still playable with this restriction?
- jmduke 13y agoThere's a lot of outrage about this -- a lot of frustrated consumers. I think its naive to assume that Square-Enix didn't have data that said "Money lost to pirates > Money to be gained from legitimate purchasers on jailbroken devices." That being said, pirates always seem to win the DRM-escalation arms race -- and the PR blowback from this will probably outweigh the extra purchases they snag.
- stcredzero 13y agoThe reason why pirates seem to always win, is that it is highly asymmetric. To do this correctly takes more patience and sneakiness than 90% of executives have in the technology context. Not everyone can be Irwin Rommel or Laurence of Arabia.
- sergiotapia 13y agoCan you issue a chargeback if the publisher does not provide you with working software?
- rcfox 13y agoIf you're buying from the App Store, this is probably a terrible idea. Other software distributors (like Steam, for example) have been known to disable people's accounts when they do a chargeback. Chargebacks aren't just "I want my money back". They're meant to fight against fraud, and there's an implicit indication that you won't be doing business with that vendor any more because of this.
- egb 13y agoWhat I'd like to see is their analytics showing how many unique users are playing the game compared with sales numbers from the App Store, to get the actual percentage of piracy that's occurring. Bonus points would be to show how many jailbroken users have purchased vs how many have pirated. Not sure how'd you detect this without IAP and receipt validation, though, given that that's the point of piracy...
- mindslight 13y agoWhat is with the prevalence of always mentioning "jailbreaking will void your warranty" completely out of the blue? It's not clear that it's actually true, and being constantly repeated everywhere only works to make it true. The manufacturer sold me a computer - installing software on it is the expected use. We wouldn't say a laptop was out of warranty because someone nuked Windows and put Linux on it. Still, it's wise to jailbreak any device as soon as you get it. This way you can be sure of having a jailbreak method, it's still in the return period, and you won't end up becoming reliant on a locked down device and worried about changing it.
- marshray 13y agoJailbreaking carries some risks to the user and this article is an example how no one really understands these risks fully. Nevertheless, jailbreaking is quite popular and it's something that ordinary iPhone users do. It's not just hackers who have some idea what they're getting into. So it's worth reminding readers that jailbreaking may bring your phone real economic consequenses. Also, this is an article about how a bit of 3rd party software behaves on jailbroken devices. It seems entirely relevant to discuss how Apple itself views the practice.
- stcredzero 13y agoThe latest stat I've seen is that only 4% of iOS devices are jailbrokem.
- stcredzero 13y agoThis is doing it wrong. You must bias to false negatives. You must make the initial impression and experience sacrosanct. You must avoid penalizing your paying customers. It's stupid to do this so obviously, so quickly, and for it to be triggered by jail breaking. Jailbreak != piracy!
- tricolon 13y agoThe title of this submission should start with "Deus Ex:" since the game's name is "Deus Ex: The Fall".