Illegal downloading of Choice/Hosted Games

As someone who has modded a few apps (always AFTER purchasing them and only for personal use), I can say it is very easy to remove the “internet only” restriction.

I’ve seen the application you are talking about and tested it on a game whose purchase I hadn’t restored. Truthfully, it’s a bit scary how easy itbis to find and use since with that, an apk decoder, and some choicescript knowledge, any game can become a walk into the park.

As for Axiom, he isn’t that skilled (he just change a few stats and use the application). The main problem is that he actually made a guide on how to do what he does, which I find pretty concerning since most people won’t bother buying the game before modding which is where I personally draw the line.

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Yeah, I’ve found quite a few for Fallen Hero. The only one I managed to get taken down was on Youtube, which responded fairly quickly.

What I am wondering is if the saves are going to be working correctly?

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Nope.
I don’t know from experience (dont worry) but fake saves mess with stats and even some choices.

Not at all defending piracy of games. But here’s an alternative view/reason why someone might not want to pay.
For example in my country (India), a couple of years ago Google play wouldn’t even let me add/accept my debit card because it only accepted credit cards because financial regulations here would allow only transactions that were made from cards that were activated for International payments.
Then debit cards started getting accepted but again International payment clause put up hurdles again.

Buying Gift cards wasn’t even an option. Finally 2 years ago, Google started selling physical gift cards through an ecom site. That’s how i bought my first game. Still I had to wait for delivery of card.

Now I have to go to an Ecom app buy an online gift card, Then… i go to playstore & enter the code to get the balance to make transactions.
Is getting International payments activated an option on my debit card? Definitely! But that again has it’s own problems & drawn out process.

Here, i was perfectly willing & capable to pay for games but financial regualtion made it infinitely more difficult. Still it’s putting up difficulties. (like i can only subscribe netflix through Google play. Which, again starts the process of buying gift cards :disappointed_relieved:)

Still, i agree, Most people are perfectly capable of purchasing CoG but they aren’t willing.

As for putting safeguards in place, Guys, major game studios have tried that approach with introduction of DRM at the cost of thousands of dollars. Gamers still managed to hack & put it out on torrent sites for general consumption.
Along with sending out thousands of DMCA takedown notices to no avail.
What chance does HG/CoG have? (Granted, here pirates are not dedicated but, what’s stopping them?)

I commend the author here for his straight forward approach. I will always buy CoG games from playstore & support the authors in whatever way i can.

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@castellan
What about other platforms, like steam.
there’s recently been this thread Purchase Transfers which, if I understand it correctly means that you can contact the support to unlock the game if you have bought it were you can.

It actually depends on what gets changed I think, various people in the Editing, Modding…Cheating? thread claim it works.

So if it really is “just” bypassing the pay system I don’t think it will mess much with the stats. :T

(And honestly as somebody who buys those games, but still at times makes minor changes for a higher personal enjoyment actually hope it works too. All against piracy but what I do in private after buying a copy - at times for more than one platform - is my business as long as I keep it to myself. And I personally would be quite unhappy about measures that may would make modding much more difficult, while those changes probably would not stop piracy that much either.)

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The attorney in me wants to fight those people, because throwing up your hands is the equivalent of saying, “It is impossible, or nearly impossible, in the current landscape, to protect your property rights.” I mean, when you think about it, that is a scary statement to make and accept, that in our current system, you can’t protect your rights to your own digital property.

But it’s where we are as a civilization at this point.

I’ve read articles about the steps you can take against pirates; and they might work once in a while, but jumping through all of the hoops is probably not cost effective for any of us. Even a hugely successful fight against a pirate site will likely be short-lived, as they will probably just pop up elsewhere like Whack a Mole.

Some authors have advised to take it as a compliment, and to try to focus on the majority of readers who do buy your stories through proper and legal channels. And hopefully even the people who get illegal versions of your game will like it enough to tell others, and at least some of those “others” will buy it legally.

It’s amazingly frustrating though, and the principle of it, that you spend hundreds or even thousands of hours on a project, just for someone to rip you off, could drive you to drink.

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Unfortunately thats the worlds most annoying thing in the world. Especially for those of us who read this stuff in transit. We don’t exactly have internet at the time and paying for that would probably cost more than buying all the HG and CoG games a few times. At least here.

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i think if someone wants to support and buy your games they will even if there is a pirating site or a free way to get the game, I and many other people like me here in cog do this, if someone is looking for a pirated game they simply are not going to buy it even if they cant get that game for free.
thats how i see it.
(is not the same for games that cost 50$ or more since buying 3 or 4 games will imply a lot of money at the same time… we are talking that almost all cog games are less than 6$ dollars each…)

btw @Eric_Moser is there a way to censure a website with pirating stuff? maybe cog/hog can make a claim to that website?

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Yeah I know the website which @andymwhy is talking about. Personally, I think nearly every single offline games right now was/being hacked or modded, one way or another, not just our CoG/HG games . The problem is right now there’s nothing we can do about that. I know how frustrated to see your hard works is being giveaway for free without our permission but you can’t do anything about it.
But the whole " can’t afford enough to buy the games " thing , I don’t think that’s the excuse. Even though 3-4 dollars/games is not much with most people. For me, I lived in Vietnam and in our country, 3-4 dollars is quite a lot of money. When I want to buy a game I usually have to spend all of my money for breakfast in 1 week (but don’t get me wrong, absolutely fine with that). So, everyone have to understand that nothing is free and when you want something , you have to work or even fight for it. Sadly , not everyone understand that.

Um…As a player who downloaded a CoG game from Axiom, I find it embarrassing for me to comment up here…Over the past 4 months I’ve been paying for every Hosted/CoG games I downloaded (like Choice of Pirates, Trial of the Demon Hunters, the newest Kepler Colony, Wayhaven…) and I really do love them. I have 32 games currently and is saving up money for my favourite CoG “The Grim and I” by Thom.B. But the problem is my money always seems to be burning quick (As an college student in a poor country I have to think of many things else to put my money in, but I spend most of my time reading WiPs and buying games from CoG). Until Choice of Romance where the price is high for me, I had to look up for a free version of it…So I downloaded the pirated game from Axiom. I paid for it later, so the dev get my support, but still I’m feeling quite embarrassing to have downloaded a game from Axiom…Please don’t ban me

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I think that would be the worst thing to do. DRM often just inconveniences the legal buyer because it often causes problems. And people who pirate them will always find a way around it, there is no DRM strong enough. See denuvo. Hailed as the end of software piracy, while causing performance issues for legal buyers while pirates just crack it and play without these issues.

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I agree, people usually dont pirate games because they really cant come up with the money but because they dont want to pay the money for that game.
So they want to try the game but dont care enough to buy it. So it’s either pirate the game or not play it at all. Those who pirate wouldnt pay for it anyway even if the game wasnt on piracy sites. if the game wasnt there they would just not play it at all.

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My tip to all pirates: don’t post on torrent sites with the same username you use here on the forums. You’re a short google search away from losing your credibility.

With that out of the way, I would like make a poll. This is about internet use. Please be absolutely honest, no matter what your opinion on offline vs online is.

Where do you play choicegames?

  • I play them at home or other places where I have a wifi connection.
  • I mostly play them where I have wifi, though sometimes it’s cellular data/3G.
  • Half the time I’m on wifi, the other half its cellular data/3G.
  • I mostly play them on cellular data/3G, though sometimes it’s wifi.
  • Aside from the initial download, I mostly play without ANY internet connection.
  • I sometimes play without ANY internet connection.

0 voters

UPDATE: Thanks for everybody’s input! I’m surprised to see there’s a >50% majority for offline-primary users. What device are you on, and where do you play? Are you on airplane mode? Do you have a data plan? There’s a lot of circumstances out there, and if you can I would like to know yours.

You can file complaints with the site administrator (use whois to see if info is available), the hosting service (same), file a DCMA complaint, go to Google, etc…again there are tools, but not sure any of it is worth the time or effort because of Whack a Mole.

You forgot to include wired internet, such as broadband ^^

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Good point, but I’m just happy the poll worked. Never made one on here before!

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I only have WIFI and not a cellular network so it depends, usually I’m at home and I have WIFI here but if I’m going out somewhere I’d have no network at all (unless I’m in a mall maybe)

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Either update your game so that let’s say only 1 chapter is free so that not as many people pirate it
or
Go on a website like that and be like “hey, i’m the dev!” and then post a picture of your account or something like that :smiley:

OOOR…
Maybe update choicescript to make it harder to hack in-app purchase?

Lost cause, my friend. There is no game security that legions of dedicated assholes won’t be able to break. Even Spyro the Dragon’s legendary security only lasted two months.

In general, DRM just pisses off legitimate users, and actual crackers take it as a challenge.

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