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Has anyone had their game illegally Downloaded ?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by XCO, Nov 7, 2014.

  1. XCO

    XCO

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    Has anyone had their game illegally Downloaded ?

    I have found a few website that are downloading my game illegally and was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this and how do you feel about it ?

    [link removed]

    ^^ Here is a site I found when I typed my APPs name (Ryu Kazuhiko ZS) in Google ^^
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 7, 2014
  2. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    I presume almost all games are illegally downloadable somewhere?
     
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  3. XCO

    XCO

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    OH they are ? OH, well this makes me feel a little better I guess...
     
  4. prophet

    prophet

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    Yea, most games can probably be found for download somewhere. I wouldn't worry about it too much as those people downloading it probably wouldn't have ever bought it anyway.
     
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  5. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    My stuff's always pirated. *puffs chest out in pride*
     
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  6. BrandyStarbrite

    BrandyStarbrite

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    @ XCO
    Normally, if your game is being pirated alot, for a while now.
    It could mean that your game is really that good. :D
    Cheers! :D
     
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  7. XCO

    XCO

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    Thanx guys, I wasn't sure what too feel lol
     
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  8. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    WIthin 24 hours of releasing Master Thief for Android I found a review site that had reviewed my game... and was linking to it for dodgy download.

    I emailed the reviewer, thanked him for his positive review, and asked what was up with the link to a dodgy download of my game. He said he had no idea that my game was for sale, apologized, and changed the link to use Google Play instead.

    I don't know about iTunes, but there are sites that (automatically?) monitor and rip copies of stuff uploaded to Google Play and post them for anyone to download. I think I'd seen my game in one of those lists within an hour of uploading it.
     
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  9. SunnyChow

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    Do what you want, 'cause a pirate is free,
    You are a pirate!
     
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  10. Graham-Dunnett

    Graham-Dunnett

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    Well, I've helped Unity customers who've told me that their iOS games are released by Apple in New Zealand at the start of their day. Their games are ripped and made available on crack site even before the game is released on the AppStore in Europe.

    I think the only way to avoid piracy is to require the game to download things from a server you host - perhaps asset bundles, or data of some kind. You can then at least tag where in the world people are connecting from.
     
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  11. derkoi

    derkoi

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    Yeah, lots. I've also had my game cloned on the Google Play store too. Twice. Which really pisses me off.
     
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  12. HemiMG

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    We even had our free Android game pirated! I noticed a massive amount of downloads in Applovin and Chartboost that didn't line up with the numbers in Google's developer console. I would have never known why except Applovin automatically imports the games and I noticed that there were four or five bundle id's that didn't belong to our game in the list. Most of them from Chinese stores. It's a bit annoying that the game was thousands of times more successful from people that were driving down our eCPM numbers, and worse, the conversion ratio that advertising use to decide whether or not to drop you, because they were from a country that mostly don't have Google Play. I'd rather have a paid game pirated, because that doesn't drive down monetization of other users.
     
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  13. Ony

    Ony

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    Every single game I've worked on since 1994 has been pirated in one way or another. It comes with the territory.
     
  14. angrypenguin

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    And you couldn't change providers or something to take advantage of the situation? That sucks. However, it's potentially good to know for future people who could maybe build in some contingency to turn that into an advantage.
     
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  15. HemiMG

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    I looked into what was available in China, but I couldn't find a lot of information. I was getting massive impressions and really low click through rates. I released an updated version using my Android Protector asset, which I created for that reason, to shut down the ads on unofficial versions and the impression counts went way down and click through ratios went to sane levels. For Chartboost, I was able to create a new App ID for a more direct comparison. Since Applovin automatically imports the app, it was a bit harder to see how well it worked. Especially with download ratio skewed so much. It was probably the worst launch I've ever had for a free product on Google Play, getting less than a dozen downloads the first day. But there were a thousand or so installs reported by Chartboost. Oddly, install counts from Chartboost are still inflated, but as long as the impressions and clickthroughs match realistically with what Google Play is telling me, I don't care too much.
     
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  16. MrEsquire

    MrEsquire

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    All my stuff has been pirated in China, I check using Flurry plugin within my apps.
    It seems the real downloads and unique users is way off / can check China sales and pirating.
    I been searching the net for solutions, there is one kit but its really out date.
    http://www.shmoopi.net/downloads/shmoopi-anti-piracy/
     
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  17. JamesArndt

    JamesArndt

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    Yeah when I look at Google Analytics (I've embedded code to track my game), I see a much higher amount of downloads of my game outside of Google Play or the Amazon App Store. Most of these were coming out of China. Seems I got a boost from the .apk file hitting all of these free download sites. Guess this speaks to the importance of being able to make income from your game even if it's pirated. I use Admob for ads in it, so even the pirated versions should be showing the ads.

    By the way I used this free plugin to do my analytics tracking.
    http://massthreat.com/labs/googleanalytics
     
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  18. R-Lindsay

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    Suppose I wanted to release a paid app without adds in it.

    Could I use a strategy of still embedding Admob, etc, and silently turning it on when it detects the app has been pirated?

    Or should I just forget about pirated copies all together.
     
  19. JamesArndt

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    Might have to be your approach. There is just no stopping the theft and redistribution of .apk files. It's gonna happen. I guess the key would be how to detect that a game has not been obtained from an official source. I was looking into this aftually some time back. http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Application-genuine.html

    "This is a boolean check which only has the value true or false. Application.Genuine works by checking whether the application has been modified since it was built from Unity, i.e. this would check if pirates have hacked and removed the App Store's DRM protection. You can use this with an IF statement to be able to restrict users access, if this is the case."

    So in your case of a paid app, I am wondering if this if/else functionality used with this check would be as simple as enabling ad display if it returns true?
     
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  20. Nanako

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    personally i don't think there is a point in trying to fight, prevent, or even think about piracy. It's a thing that happens. Most people who pirate software are too poor or young to have bought it anyway.

    your effort is better spent on creating things, and maybe on some kind of validation system so you're not wasting support time on pirates (serial number for forum signup or something).

    plus, sometimes it provides free advertising and helps reach a new audience.
     
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  21. MrEsquire

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    I think validation systems are a big no no for mobile games, iOS and Android pirating is the worse due to jailbroken devices etc I think it is hard to stop piracy but this attitude is not good, to poor to spend 69p/Dollar?? - how is this so when you spend this amount on sweets/drink and other crap, yet u cannot spend on app, seriously that sounds like poor argument to me. People want to pirate as in countries such as china this might seem the norm.

    Spend months as a indie developer making something excellent and expecting the revenue back from the game to build better and expand and if the revenue is no revenue, then u can guess the rest.
     
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  22. JamesArndt

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    Sounds like everyone has the right idea. You can't really stop piracy, but you can creatively work around it and still make income. Call me crazy, but the idea popped in my head to even reward it to a degree. No clue how to do that though.
     
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  23. MrEsquire

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    Dont think you get it dude, a big company or studio, really does not impact them alot and they can think of many ways to deter piracy.

    Small indie studio with a nice game, impacts them alot -> this is the main point I'm trying to make.
     
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  24. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Yeah heading down robin hood territory there.

    Smaller indies are much more vulnerable, it's true - and I wonder why pirates can't see or respect that. In any case, I ask them to support us in spirit if they do pirate it :)
     
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  25. Nanako

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    This sounds like moral judgement to me.
    We are in the business of creating things, not politics.

    Trying to argue over the reasons why, or guess people's motivations, are just a waste of your time and creative energy. As, imo, are spending much time on attempting to control them.

    I think this article is worth a read: http://kk.org/thetechnium/2008/01/better-than-fre/

    That's a lot of ways in which you can positively encourage people not to pirate your stuff
     
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  26. BrandyStarbrite

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    Thanks for the links Nanako! :D
    I shall read this as soon as possible.
     
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  27. high-octane

    high-octane

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    Cloud gaming through video and data streaming has the strongest potential for ending the trade of illegal downloads.

    Games are essentially services, and with high bandwidth streaming, there should be no reason for the physical ownership or retention of the binaries and data that constitute a game.
     
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  28. Clearwater

    Clearwater

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    Question - if my app has been pirated by a user, and they try to then purchase an in-app item with it, does it still work? Can they still make purchases? Added to that, can they also steal in-app purchase items?
     
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  29. angrypenguin

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    All of that depends entirely on how you've implemented things. The short answer is "if they really want to and they try hard enough, yes".
     
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  30. Zeblote

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    Why would a paid app have IAPs?
     
  31. darkhog

    darkhog

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    That's good. If you're not getting pirated, it means nobody likes you.

    //edit: Obligatory YouTube video when this topic is involved:
     
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  32. protopop

    protopop

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    Nimian Legends : BrightRidge was on the torrent sites a few days after I released it. I think of it as free publicity:)
     
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  33. Zeblote

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    Add ads and release on pirate site yourself for free profit
     
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  34. willemsenzo

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    You can always distribute a version of your game that has all kind of annoying 'bugs' so playing it isn't so much fun. Maybe even release a couple different versions with different bugs and hope most people don't bother to look further for a working version. Personally I wouldn't worry too much because they weren't going to buy the game in the first place anyway so it might be a huge waste of time.
     
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  35. darkhog

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    Well, Ubisoft tried that route with newest AC. Didn't work for them so well...

    We need more developers like you, with that mindset.

    Also I'm thinking about putting "harmless" DRM in my game that would send anonymous data about whether game was pirated or not (along with an hash generated from IP address, effectively anonymized IP) and maybe gently suggest that if you enjoyed the game you should buy it if pirate version was detected. But I don't know how to detect such stuff.

    Why? To see what conversion rate I'd get from pirating customers after 2 years, basically how many of them would decide they like my game so much that they'll buy it afterwards (it'll be affordable) - if I get later data that shows that person suddenly started to run bought version I see that user converted (data would be totally anonymous). I expect conversion rate to be 20-30% and no less than 10%.

    After it'll get analyzed, data will be wiped.

    Anyway, we need more devs like you, Alex Poysky (dev of Pixel Piracy), Sos Sosowski, Cactus.
     
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  36. Gigiwoo

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    Yes.
    Gigi
     
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  37. Zaladur

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    The SOLE benefit that pirates gain you is exposure. Why you would want to spin that around into negative reputation for your game or company alludes me. You hurt yourself much more than the pirates.

    Note - I don't support piracy for any reason, but I will admit that it can come with a silver lining.
     
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  38. Zeblote

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    It's not like you can hurt them at all. Someone is going to crack whatever ridiculous DRM you throw at them, upload a real pirate version, and all your work goes to waste.
     
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  39. Aiursrage2k

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    I think if you keep updating your game the pirates wont bother with it (although i guess it would depend on how popular it is -- although maybe they have an automated system that just does it for all games).
     
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  40. angrypenguin

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    Expansion packs? Or any number of other things that add value?
     
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  41. willemsenzo

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    I haven't looked at it from this perspective but you're absolutely right. Thanks for the input.
     
  42. GarBenjamin

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    You CAN stop the piracy of your work. And it is very simple. More than one way even. You can give away everything you create for free. When someone charges money for their work hoping to make X amount of money and people distribute it freely the creator calls it piracy and it is bad. When someone releases their work for free expecting no money hoping as many people as possible enjoy it and people share it freely the creator thinks that is awesome. So the first way is changing expectations. Another way is to never release anything. Just create and create but always keep it to yourself. A third way is to simply never create anything to begin with. :)
     
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  43. TonyLi

    TonyLi

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    Unfortunately, it still gets pirated. This is a quote from a recent article by Andrew Wang:
    Updates don't appear to be the solution either. Pirate sites will just host old versions, which is worse because they'll still have reputation-denting bugs that are fixed in the current version.

    The best solution may be to foster an enthusiastic community that will support your development efforts, and ignore pirates and just let them become irrelevant.
     
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  44. Aiursrage2k

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    I guess it would really depend on the game and how replayable it is. But in the case of nuclear throne they just keep adding new content, tweaking the gameplay, one of the devs will come on the streams (he even did a 5 minute real time update and all the people in the chat were impressed). I think all of these things will only help with sales.
     
  45. GarBenjamin

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    Oh yeah of course it can be copied and distributed. But generally when someone is releasing something completely for free they either don't care if that happens or they want that to happen. For it to be distributed I mean. At least that is how it used to be. When something was called Freeware it was just put out there for free. No ads or other way to make money. It all comes back to their expectations again. If they were expecting money from ad displays or something like that they would see it as a bad thing. And yes I can see them not liking it if someone just took their work and published it online as their own. That would be annoying. But what I was getting at is if they make something and release it for free and have NO expectations. None. Except that as many people as possible enjoy the fruits of their labor. In that case they would be happy. If they are expecting something in return.... money, credit/publicity, anything besides other people enjoying their work then they won't be happy.
     
  46. Meltdown

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    1.) Make your game free to play.

    2.) Obfuscate and protect your builds where possible.

    3.) Put as much of your game logic in the cloud as you can.

    4.) Don't let your servers serve any blacklisted clients or versions of your game that seem corrupted.

    5.) Do regular client updates.


    They will if a lot of your logic is hosted on servers. You can disconnect any clients that are not up to date.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2015
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  47. TonyLi

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    Because we all love those single-player games with always-online requirements. ;) I know what you mean, though. I can even sympathize with EA despite the SimCity fiasco. It feels bad to see your work pirated.
     
  48. Meltdown

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    The game doesn't always have to be online, you can cache local data, then send to the server when connected. But say after a week, if there's been no update, you could force the client to update.
     
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  49. Clearwater

    Clearwater

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    I've seen my free app on pirate sites **

    Still, there are plenty of paid apps with iaps (e.g. new levels, gear upgrades etc).

    My question is all about iap theft.
     
  50. XCO

    XCO

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    Last edited: Jan 11, 2015