The Downfall of Hackulous/Installous!!!!!

[thewitt]

okay. thanks. let me test these waters. don't know if it's acceptable to ask this or not. who shut down these pirated app places? was it some government organization? just curious.

The government doesn't care about pirated apps...

 

[bknewtype]

not to mention. the developers sometimes offer free apps if you can get it in time. :]

 

[Oscar_D_Grouch]

Regarding trying before buying, I could care less about paying .99 and not liking it, it is the more expensive apps that need it. Case in point, when I bought the Navigon app, which was $40 if I remember right, I sure as hell was not going to plunk down that money without trying it first, and there are no free options for apps like that. Another case in in point for a legitimate use for it was: When I started playing abble dabble and words with friends I bought a "cheat" app to help with word placement that worked with both games. Subsequently, the developer updated the app and dropped support for abble dabble. Therefore, I downloaded a previous version and used the method to have two instances of one app. what was so wrong about using installous to get back dropped functionality from an app that I paid for?

 

[KevinJS]

The thing that was so wrong is that while you might have tried before you bought, the majority of people in your shoes likely wouldn't have bothered.

I'm going to steal a quote here. The person it comes from will recognize it, so thanks in advance.

If I decide I want to buy a car, is it right for me to go find one in a parking lot, break into it and take it for a spin? After all, I can always put it back if I don't like it and no harm is done.

In any case, this thread is not about the rights and wrongs of piracy methods. It's about the fact that one of the biggest thorns in the side of the legitimate jailbreaking community is gone. Jailbreaking has enough of a bad press, without having its name linked to theft.

 

[Oscar_D_Grouch]

That analogy does not even come close to applying to the situation.

 

[Pinkpoison]

That analogy does not even come close to applying to the situation.

most people will get the gist of it,a lot of people would have "tried before they bought" and then not bought but would have kept on using the app free of charge,thats wrong and it's what we're talking about here in this thread.

 

[thewitt]

I am very happy to see this pirate site gone, even though I know there are plenty of them left.

We were recently contracted by a customer with a popular iOS game who wants us to "lock it down" to prevent piracy in their next release.

This is a little challenging because they have already sold several hundred thousand copies - though their server logs show a steady increase in users that do not appear to be associated with sales or simply additional devices on the same iTunes account.

Sales have basically stalled while server accounts are being added at an alarming rate.

We found the software is widely distributed on pirate sites.

Locking this down will be interesting.

We will be implementing a mandatory update - without which the software will no longer run since it interacts with the sever - and will be flagging jail broken devices in the server access logs to start with.

What steps we take after that we will not disclose, but it will be interesting.

 

[KevinJS]

Pity you have to throw the baby out with the bath water. This is precisely why the jailbreakers in the forums are so opposed to piracy. They all get tarred with the same brush.

 

[thewitt]

Pity you have to throw the baby out with the bath water. This is precisely why the jailbreakers in the forums are so opposed to piracy. They all get tarred with the same brush.

Yes, it is pity.

I don't believe in this case we will block all jail broken devices, but these are the ones who will be scrutinized for running a pirated version.

In this case, we are not protecting syndicated content, we are only trying to block illegal copies of the app from being run. How we plan to do that is something I will not share however.

 

[willerz2]

On the note of the 2 users asking about how Installous/Hackulous is shut down, they were shut down from the lack of users apparently. According to the source, the apps are being updated and added, but there aren't enough users to maintain it.

 

[Darkstar2007]

On the note of the 2 users asking about how Installous/Hackulous is shut down, they were shut down from the lack of users apparently. According to the source, the apps are being updated and added, but there aren't enough users to maintain it.

That's great news.
Maybe this will be a growing trend.

 

[aox4121]

Yes, it is pity.

I don't believe in this case we will block all jail broken devices, but these are the ones who will be scrutinized for running a pirated version.

In this case, we are not protecting syndicated content, we are only trying to block illegal copies of the app from being run. How we plan to do that is something I will not share however.

IF you can even accomplish, technically, what you're saying. I know of a couple companies that attempted to block piracy the way you're describing (server based) and it still didn't prevent piracy from happening. Even OS systems with USB dongles (keys) can be hacked. Jailbreaking an iPhone is itself a "hack around a server". As the last poster said - lets just hope the interest starts dying enough that they die their own death.

 

[willerz2]

I think one of the better measures we can take at the moment, is to have the app free, but have everything else server based. Another problem is the fact that people are trying to find workarounds for buying the currency in game that we incorporate. Games like Zynga Poker or one of the games I'm helping to maintain, Castle Age, have currency you can buy, and that's one of the major income for the app. Then you have that Cydia tweak that allows you to bypass the non-server based currency shop like the Halfbrick games I believe, so that's one work around if they can't find the pirated version of the app. But if everything were to be server based, like aox4121 said, there's only so much that can be prevented. Eventually people would find a way to exploit the app like that Cydia tweak with in-game purchases.

 

[thewitt]

IF you can even accomplish, technically, what you're saying. I know of a couple companies that attempted to block piracy the way you're describing (server based) and it still didn't prevent piracy from happening. Even OS systems with USB dongles (keys) can be hacked. Jailbreaking an iPhone is itself a "hack around a server". As the last poster said - lets just hope the interest starts dying enough that they die their own death.

We have several approaches we use today that are highly successful, though we are not naive enough to believe we are 100% piracy proof.

What I can tell you is the systems we have in use today result in a much lower rate of users to purchased software. We expect users to install on multiple devices through the same iTunes account, but we do not expect this to be much more than twice the number of purchases, and this is what we see on successful deployments.

The customer I mentioned above has more than 8 times the number of users as paying customers.

 

[aox4121]

We have several approaches we use today that are highly successful, though we are not naive enough to believe we are 100% piracy proof.

What I can tell you is the systems we have in use today result in a much lower rate of users to purchased software. We expect users to install on multiple devices through the same iTunes account, but we do not expect this to be much more than twice the number of purchases, and this is what we see on successful deployments.

The customer I mentioned above has more than 8 times the number of users as paying customers.

Great! Good luck? But those are early numbers (ratio) for you guys, right? A year from now let us know if that ratio is holding. Wish you all the best. Pirating hurts everyone in the final analysis.