Smells Like Donkey, the iPhone developer behind casual beat ’em up Tap Fu, has raised major concerns over Apple’s security measures in the face of some startling piracy figures.
Speaking via a blog posting, the team claims that 80 per cent of players who submitted high scores for Tap Fu during the first week of sales obtained the game illegally. This figure apparently peaked at 90 per cent.
Smells Like Donkey says that it is, “very surprised and concerned at how easy it is” to pirate iPhone games. Having researched the process, it was found to be “MUCH easier than actually buying it on iTunes.”
In the case of Tap Fu, none of the players who pirated the game then went on to buy it.
The developer goes on to predict that, “developers will be taking it into their own hands to try and prevent” piracy, and believes that the new downloadable content structure is one major way to do so. Another is to require verification when accessing multiplayer content, locking out all but legitimate owners.
Ultimately, Smells Like Donkey concedes that, “there’s probably [only] a few of these people that would have bought our game in the first place so it’s not really a big deal,” but finds the trend of pirating simply because you can “depressing.”
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