作者：Tyler York

游戏盗版问题十分严重。所有应用开发者均遭遇过这种困扰，尤其是游戏开发者，他们极易成为被瞄准的目标。有名独立开发者曾声称其PC游戏遭受95%的盗版率，该问题同样出现在移动平台上（游戏邦注：尤其是Android平台）。某个Android开发者在历经数个月的辛苦工作后发现，他的游戏在发行24小时内，就有超过40个盗版博客提到它的游戏。Mad Finger Games在最近的采访中提到，他们在iOS和Android平台的游戏盗版率达到60%。

对独立开发者或小型团队而言，打击盗版现象的最佳方式就是尽量在第一时间阻止盗版行为。以下为反盗版行为，打击猖狂的应用盗贼的一些方法。

方法1）：转向免费增值模式

很遗憾但事实上：Android平台上大部分盗版游戏都为付费游戏，不是免费模式。而制作免费游戏可以极大降低游戏盗版者的盗版动机。虽然免费增值模式具有大量优势，但Android平台上的盗版现象尤为显著。

然而免费增值模式并非高招：IAP盗版仍旧存在

虽然转向免费增值模式确实阻碍了盗版行为，但免费游戏仍然存在盗版现象。Android平台上的“IAP Free”以及“IAP Cracker”这些程序让窃贼有机可趁，他们可以假冒本地交易，欺骗游戏，或向游戏服务器发送欺诈性的交易信息。通常，大多这些方法均在Android平台上盛行，而越狱iPhone手机同样难免此劫。黑客甚至知道如何解锁苹果App Store上的“免费”IAP，尽管这并不是个好主意。

幸好，你也可以通过一些简单方法打击IAP盗版。通过阅读大量论坛帖子、文章以及有关移动盗版的邮件内容，我们可以得到以下最简单、最有效地打击盗版行为的方法。

方法2）远程通讯

移动平台的反盗版行为的一个基础就是让应用与游戏服务器进行远程通讯。将玩家的ID与行动记录到服务器中就是打击盗版行为的唯一方式（单人游戏也不例外）。你必须了解是否已发生盗版行为，并采取相应措施。这意味着，如果来自某个地区的购买信息均带有欺骗性，那么应关掉该地区创建的所有账户，删除他们通过用户账号非法购买的物品，或完全封闭非法账户。如果我们将此同下一个方法（在线注册）结合使用，将会更有成效。

方法3）在线登陆

online registration system(from gamasutra)

在防止盗版时，我们最常使用的妙招为使用邮箱帐号登陆。无论用户何时体验游戏，他们都需通过邮箱验证（游戏邦注：首次访问后方可采取自动登陆）。这样就可为盗版者进入游戏时设置了一道障碍。当你发现某个用户正在盗版游戏的IAP，你可以关闭他的邮箱帐号，那样，盗版者在失去账户后会失去一切非法所得。

如果你打算进一步防止盗版现象，你也可以要求玩家进行邮箱验证。你应在游戏中的合适位置实行这一方法，但要在IAP购买前实行。这样能够保证盗版者无法使用假冒邮箱，同时也给盗版过程增加了难度，因为你为每个盗版周期增加了更多工作量。这样盗版者每回被发现时，他们就要申请新邮箱帐号，以便在游戏中创建新账户。

方法4）加密

最后，为了更强有力地打击盗版现象，我们应对所有涉及IAP的对话实行加密，尤其是通过服务器确认IAP购买。这既给购物过程增加额外保护层，也阻止了不少黑客（即使这种方法无法阻挡所有黑客）。如果你打算进一步加密应用，你可以使用Molebox这种第三方加密服务，它可以增加应用破解的难度。

战斗持久不息

不幸的是，无论你登陆哪个平台，或者你的系统建立得多么完善，你仍无法完全杜绝盗版行为。也就是说，你可以针对盗版行为加大游戏的盗版难度或耗时量，那样大部分潜在窃贼会放弃盗版想法。没有人可以耗尽一生同盗版行为作战，所以，我们希望你可以采用这些方法，以最小成本保证较低的盗版率。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

4 Simple Tips for Combating Game Piracy

by Tyler York

Game piracy is a huge problem. All app developers suffer from it, but game developers are particularly vulnerable. One acclaimed indie developer suffered a 95% piracy rate for his PC title, and the problem has carried over to many developers on the mobile platforms, especially Android. After months of hard work, one Android developer found that over 40 piracy blogs had picked up his game within 24 hours of launch. Mad Finger Games recently did an interview where they said they saw a 60% piracy rate across iOS and Android.

For solo developers or small teams, the best way to combat piracy is to do their best to prevent piracy in the first place. Here’s some anti-piracy tips to make life harder for those swashbuckling app thieves.

Tip 1): Switch to Freemium

It’s sad but true: the majority of pirated games on Android are Paid titles, not free ones. By making your game free, you are removing a significant amount of the incentive for others to pirate your game. There are numerous other benefits to freemium, but piracy is especially important on Android (and may help you monetize better to boot). For a detailed walkthrough on how to switch your app to freemium, Rovio’s Michail Katkoff wrote a guest post for our blog on the topic.

But freemium is not a silver bullet: IAP piracy exists

Yet while switching to freemium definitely deters pirates, freemium piracy still exists. On Android, programs like “IAP Free” and “IAP Cracker” give pirates the ability to spoof transactions locally to fool your game, or send fraudulent transactions to your game server. The majority of these tools are most commonly used on Android, but jailbroken iPhones are likely culprits as well. Hackers have even figured out how to unlock “free” IAPs on Apple’s own App Store, though using it was considered universally to be a bad idea.

The good news is that you can fight in-app purchase (IAP) piracy too, with methods that aren’t obnoxiously difficult for players to wade through. After sifting through countless forum posts, articles, and email threads on mobile piracy, here’s a short list of the simplest and most effective methods for making a pirate’s life difficult.

Tip 2) Remote communication

The baseline for any anti-piracy efforts on mobile is to have the app communicate to your game server remotely. Even if it’s a single player game, recording player IDs and actions to your server is the only way to fight piracy. You need to be able to understand if piracy is occurring and hopefully take action. This can mean shutting down account creations from a particular country if the majority of purchases from that country are fraudulent, by removing the ill-gotten purchases from users accounts, or shutting the offending game account down entirely. This is especially effective when used in conjunction with our next tip: online registration.

Tip 3) Online registration

The most commonly cited elegant solution for preventing piracy was online registration with an email address. Whenever the user goes to play, they need to authenticate with their email address (automatic sign-in is fine after the first visit). Doing so creates a gate that you can use to prevent pirates from accessing your game. Then, when you catch a user pirating IAP your game, you can shut out that email address and the pirate will lose everything they gained illicitly with the loss of the account.

If you want to go the extra mile, you can ask for email verification from players as well. You should choose the right place to do this within your game, but it should always be before in-app purchases can be bought. This ensures that pirates can’t use a fake email, and makes the piracy process more difficult because you’re adding more work to each piracy cycle. Each time a pirate gets caught, they now have to create a new email address in addition to creating a new account in your game.

Tip 4) Encryption

Lastly, to make a pirate’s life much more difficult, use encryption for all communications related to in-app purchases, especially IAP purchase confirmations to your server. This adds an extra layer of protection between your purchases that will deter many hackers, even if it doesn’t prevent all of them. And if you want to take your app’s encryption to the next level, you can use a third-party encryption service like Molebox to make your app extra difficult to crack.

An ongoing battle

The sad truth is that no matter what platform you’re on or how well you build your system, you’re never completely piracy-proof. That said, you can make your game so difficult or time-consuming to pirate that the majority of would-be offenders will give up. No one should let their lives be consumed by fighting pirates, so hopefully you can “set it and forget it” with these tips and endure much lower piracy rates with minimal maintenance.(source:gamasutra)