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Comment by edwhitesell | Hacker News Reader

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edwhitesell·

Step 1: ATT adds the 'infinite lives' interception/response to the proxy servers for the Starbucks hotspots/WiFi.

Step 2: Starbucks Marketing advertises 'Unlimited Candy Crush lives at Starbucks!'

Step 3: Profit! Well, assuming all of the squatters actually buy stuff.

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I like it. Almost all the Candy Crush players I know set their clocks forward to instantly get more lives though.

Ha, I used to be lazy and set the date forward by 1 month, instead of the hour or day. Then one day I realized the iPhone has a max date set in 2055 or something - you can't set your time past that. I wonder if iPhone dates will stop working when we reach 2055??

Nah, there will be a call for consultants to come in and fix the "Y2K55 Bug".

Step 4: Get DMCA'd for "circumventing" a "copyright protection system"

I'm struggling to come up with a way in which the lives system could possibly be defended as a copyright protection mechanism (it's a mechanism to funnel users into it's in app purchases, not to prevent use of unauthorized copies... and in fact copies of the software are given away freely). This is basically Gamesharking your game, which has been upheld in courts IIRC.

I guess if you buy the game and then don't have to pay to play, it's ok, but in this case you can buy playtime so it's a bit different.

More like CFAA (unauthorized access). One might avoid certain penalties by staying under $5000 equivalent IAP. Of course this sounds ridiculous, but we live in ridiculous times.

I would imagine the legal issues would be more around using the Candy Crush Saga brand name for marketing purposes without a business relationship.

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