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Comment by apayan | Hacker News Reader

Piracy on iOS is just as high as it is on Android. The only difference is that Google acknowledged that DRM doesn't work and made a license check option available to developers instead (years ago, nothing new).

We released our game for iOS earlier this year and easily 80% of our users had pirated copies of the game.

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How much is it? It's astonishing that people bother to pirate iOS games when they hardly cost anything in the first place.

I read a quite plausible explanation on HN about it: Many people in Asia buy iOS devices as a status symbol, but can't really afford anything beyond, so most devices are jailbroken and loaded with pirate app stores. Comparable to the china tablets that already come with pirate app stores.

This post is about IAPs, but I assume the numbers for apps would be quite similar: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AaronIsaksen/20121213/183519/...

Given that only a tiny percentage of iOS users jailbreak, this just means that your game is only being bought by a very small percentage of users.

Users can install software on iOS devices without jailbreaking. The most common method is resigning the software using an enterprise cert (there are plenty of sites on the internet that do this).

I simply don't know: Can't those signing certs be revoked by Apple?

Yes, but how hard is Apple going to chase those certs?

Unless someone is doing something big or strategic to Apple (and random app piracy doesn't qualify, IMO), I just don't see it. Chasing "rogue" enterprise certs is all cost (time, effort, energy, risk of angering legitimate enterprise customers) for little to no benefit.

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