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Android APKs of my game is all over the internet (with hacked purchases!)

Hi Gamemakers!
I've released my game not that long ago on Google Play store. Today when I did a google search about my game I see many apk websites hosting my game, with signatures, keys and more info.
Some even have mods of my game with unlimited purchases.

I never posted my game "Floria Virtual Garden" anywhere else besides Play store. I use Json method with buffering save to save variables pertaining to purchases and I thought it was the safest way.
This is my very first game so there is a lot I don't know. What can I do now to secure it? Are those APK websites like <removed> legal?

Thank you!

Potentially risky links removed ~Tsuk
 

Amon

Member
I would remove the names of the apk pirate websites from your post. The other thing is, you will never be able to stop people doing this. It sucks but that's the way it is.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
Those sites are certainly not legal if you didn't give them your game. The issue here is more that there isn't much you can do to avoid it happening. Any DRM you could come up with can be broken. The best thing you can do is just make the game as enticing as you can, and do consistent updates so that only the legit people can get in on the new content right away. The pirates will end up getting them to, but not right away at least.

You could investigate DMCA information, and attempt to send those sites such notices...but where one disappears 10 more pop up. In my opinion it isn't worth messing with, and in fact you could consider it beneficial in that you get some slight exposure. The other consideration is that depending on how you look at it, you may not be losing sales anyway, as many of the people doing the pirating would not have purchased anyway.
 

TsukaYuriko

☄️
Forum Staff
Moderator
I'll remove the links to those sites to avoid legal issues...

There's not much you can do after the game gets hacked. You can't permanently remove anything from the internet, after all. It only takes one person to keep uploading things even after you do take them down.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
I say take it as a learning experience,

Have DRM that can withhold crackers for the first week of sales, anything after is a plus but by that time you're major sales have gone down a bit and any good cracker has already started hacking your game.

Have anti-piracy, this isnt necessary, but if you can add it and hide it, crackers will be slowed down trying to patch it out.

Make your game not worth pirating, by this I mean have the price be on the low end, doesnt have to be free but dont make it the same as a midranged game,
add a linux export, a lot of crackers want the world on linux so this will deter a portion of them

keep updating the game while there is interest in it, during this you should add new drm stuff and anti-piracy if you already have that, this will force crackers to re-crack the game.

Every game you make will be cracked and pirated, its not a matter of preventing it.
Its a matter of slowing them down.

Best wishes for the future of your game dev and congrats on your first game! Sad that it was pirated tho.
 
A couple years ago, I worked for some record label which I won't name. They had a dedicated team (maybe 5-6 persons, can't remember exactly) whose sole job was to scout the internet and flag the pirated stuff. Say 6 persons at 35 hrs/week, that's over 10k hours/year spent on trying to prevent that from happening. No idea if they got their 400k$/year in salary back with that, but it goes to show how much of a plague piracy is.
Of course, this is not the gaming world, but my guess is it's probably as bad as the music industry.
 
I was soo hoping there would be some miracle extension called "Pirates go away, bad pirates!" in GMS...oh well.
My app is not doing good in Playstore anyway 100+ installs only, laughable....so no, the game is not worth to be pirated. (however I did end up on one list of "Top android games to try in February 2021" https://gameskeys.net/top-android-games-to-tryout-in-february-2021/ no idea how.
My other question is it possible the modded version will include someone else bank info to Google play store for purchases?
 
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HalRiyami

Member
I was soo hoping there would be some miracle extension called "Pirates go away, bad pirates!" in GMS...oh well.
My app is not doing good in Playstore anyway 100+ installs only, laughable....so no, the game is not worth to be pirated. (however I did end up on one list of "Top android games to try in February 2021" https://gameskeys.net/top-android-games-to-tryout-in-february-2021/
Sadly, there will never be a miracle extension on any platform or engine. It's just the way it is.
Probably the safest way to protect your game is to make it online and have everything execute server side. You end up with a game like Pokémon Go where almost every action is simply the game requesting the server to to do something and the server executes it if possible.

My other question is it possible the modded version will include someone else bank info to Google play store for purchases?
Possible but unlikely. Generally, cracked versions just bypass/fake the authentication so nothing actually goes through the payment processing system.
 

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
Is it easy to implement in GMS for a game that is already done?
Uh...online is not easy to implement in ANY game, already done or not. It isn't only the code, it's the server and equipment you have to either purchase or rent, and then maintain in both the equipment and the speedy connection. And don't forget the server code as well. Probably the one thing worse than this is something like an MMO.
 

HalRiyami

Member
Is it easy to implement in GMS for a game that is already done?
Just like @kburkhart84 said, this is not a GMS thing.
In my opinion, the effort/benefit ratio so low it is almost never going to be worth it for small games. Unless you're losing hundreds of thousands* on piracy, you're not gonna make your effort back in profits.
*Ok, I don't know the exact number but I want to emphasize that you need to be losing lots on money for you to go this route.
 
I was looking into servers before and then realized it was a little more than I can chew, so I abandoned the idea.
Another worry is can hackers ad viruses to the APK and damage game reputation?
 

O.Stogden

Member
Anyone who uses APK sites like these knows they run the risk of getting viruses, it's quite common and largely warned against. And they 100% know what they are doing is illegal.

You shouldn't worry about stuff like this. You cannot stop it, no matter how hard you try. You also have no control whatsoever over someone tampering with your APK and turning it into something malicious and uploading it elsewhere, developers with hundreds of staff members have never succeeded in stopping things like this. It's not worth losing sleep over.
 
You can make a warning on your official page like
"If you are getting this game somewhere else than from *this place*, you risk getting *scary virus warning*, as these site are operated by unauthorized third parties"
Or something of the sort...go with dissuasion
 

gnysek

Member
YYG was making games at some point too, and even if they were free, and have not paid addons, they were on torrents and everywhere as cracked software. That was a big blow to me at that time, as it's always sad to see your work pirated, but sadly that's how world works. It's not YYG fault, it's cause of jailbreaks and roots, and it's cause of architecture of mobile phones, so every app can be affected this way.
 
Piracy is inevitable

All that can be done is delaying it with security so you get the early sales that most profits come from
 
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I have come up with a random number generator that is placed in several startup areas of the game. When initiated (say, 1 out of 50 times) the license is checked. I know this would make it harder to hack because the cracker would have to eliminate each case, compile, eliminate, compile. This method however, is still crackable...
I saw this in some other article, but I am not sure how to initiate license check in GMS besides ticking the licensing checkmark.
 
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