So this is the story : once upon a time there was a family ( man and wife ) , iPhone enthusiasts who decided to develop an iPhone/Touch applications. They did a research on that matter, spend approx 250 hours to code it, and on Xmas Eve last yr they released Whack ‘em All for .99 cents on the appstore. They were very happy, in the first 2 weeks they sold 811 units, and everything was great.
But one day, the great iphone app hacker came , cracked their app and make it available for the entire world for free. They couldnt belive that such a curse falled upon their “baby” and they decided to find out who this cracker is and to contact him. Check the convo below ( i got storry teller skillz huh? 😛 )
*******************************************************************************
From: myself (me@jrtb.com)
To: most_uniQue@hotmail.com
FSM EXCLUSIVE DEAL Hey
I’m the developer for Whack ‘em All I noticed you’re being given credit for cracking Whack ‘em All and making it generally available for free.
We (just my wife and I) haven’t even made enough money off of this to pay for the iPhone we had to buy to develop it on Just yesterday 40 times more people got your version of the app than bought it off the app store!
I’ve asked some of the sites if they would be willing to take your version of the app offline so that we can make enough money on the app to cover our costs.
I’m curious though why you’re doing this? Would it help if our game were free and we had banner ads?
Thanks!
James
James and Connie Bossert
fairladymedia.com
Reply
*******************************************************************************
Reply from: most_uniQue@hotmail.com
As many iPhone and iPod touch owners have discovered, Apple’s iTunes App Store has many flaws which render it useless to the common user. Apple has chosen to allow a multitude of ridiculous, worthless, poorly-represented applications through its “strict” screening process, nearly all written by mediocre programmers with a dream of getting rich quick. Many of these programmers game the reviews system, misrepresent their application in the description, and generally try to swindle the honest buyer. Applications generally do not cost much, but small fees add up. The iPhone/iPod community has wasted so much money on these programs, an epidemic has taken hold where people have simply stopped buying apps they aren’t certain of so they don’t find themselves purchasing yet another waste of a program.
Apple could quite easily solve this problem by implementing a sort of trial period for each application, but they do not. The user is forced to buy blindly without ever getting to try the application first. Appulo.us is a collection of links to allow iPhone and iPod touch users the ability to try out full, unlimited versions of device software before making the decision to buy it.
You cannot accuse me for those 40 people because all of them would have NOT purchased your application anyway. And as said above i only want to give public the change to try out your game before spending their money. I at first did not crack any games but after i purchased a few games which were not as good as the description let me believe i wanted to help others not to waste their money on something which even has no return policy. To solve this problem either talk to Apple to allow trials or as you said, you can release your game on Cydia with ads.
Future emails/responses to /dev/null.
*******************************************************************************
Reply from: myself (me@jrtb.com)
Just in case you’re still checking
I appreciate the response! I’m happy about all the exposure the cracked copy of the game is generating for us. Hopefully that will translate into enough earnings for us to be able to develop another game Pirating is a fact of life these days and I appreciate that if it wasn’t you it would have been someone else
A couple of quick questions would really help me understand more about this and hopefully improve the quality of games and apps on the app store:
Could you point me to some resources to be able to understand how you cracked the game? I’d love to understand more about it!
Do you crack just any app (like from a list someone gives you), or do you only crack apps that you’d like to play?
I’m thinking about publishing a story about this on my blog. If there is anything you would like the public at large to know, let me know and I’ll pass it on
Thanks!
James
*******************************************************************************
Reply from: most_uniQue@hotmail.com
Thousands and thousands of new people saw your app on Appulous so i hope that got your app more publicity. When i crack an app, any app, i do not do it to hurt developers. Without you we wouldn’t even have our community =) I do this so people would know is an app worth their money.
Now before i answer your questions i’d like to know where did you get my email if not from Hackulous? Because im sure you have heard of Hackulous and therefore visited it so you should know these already… But anyway
I use Crackulous. It is an “one-tap” cracking software developed by Hackulous but only available for Beta testers and Staff. (No, you cannot become a beta tester But if you check our Tutorials section you’ll find a guide “Cracking Apps With xCrack”. xCrack is version 0.1 of Crackulous which has now been developed to version 0.9b. We are planning on releasing Crackulous to the public when it hits 1.0 but i cannot give any date for it.
At first i cracked the ones i had on my iPhone but i didn’t have many so i looked our Requests section to see which apps are wanted and cracked 30 of them. But i never even liked the idea of being a cracker so i cracked total of 35 apps and now i’ve “retired” From 35 apps i got just about 3-4 thanks… (You can find most_uniQue’s Cracked Apps from our Releases section)
So in the future i’m only going to continue being a moderator on Hackulous and helping others with their problems because that’s what i like to do and that’s why i joined Hackulous in the first place.
And i don’t know but is it allowed to release your games on e.g. Cydia with ads? Because that would be a huge benefit for you.
Visit Hackulous and take a look around: http://hackulo.us/ And why not to introduce yourself to the community at our Introductions section.
PS: You can add me as your friend at hackulous if you want
*******************************************************************************
Reply from: myself (me@jrtb.com)
I got your email by googling “most_uniQue”
Thanks for the tips on Crackulous! I’ll have to check that out. We’ll be looking into a free version with ads soon, I would assume the ads would still work even with Cydia, we’ll find out! I’m going to post this on my blog today, so perhaps you’ll get some props there
original post here