Total BS, these piraters are just fueling the need for DRM based games. Oh if I still had no life.... Like the cracker obviously does.... I mean a freaking 99 cent game. GET A LIFE

If it was a $50 crysis game that sucked and cost a lot of money i can reason with the cracker (lol) but for $1 no, the devs spent 250 hours fora $1 game while a cracker (lol) spends prob 1-3 hours un-doing 250 hours of work on a cheap game. He is just another example of a jackass.

I agree, why waste your time on cracking a game that sells for so little? It sounds like the hacker is making it sound like he is protecting people from bad software. It's a dollar for a phone game, not the next big name Xbox or PS3 title.

For 99 cents its not even worth hacking it.

Don't get me wrong. cracked stuff is DESTROYING software in general, but if your gonna crack something it may as well be something you KNOW is overpriced in the first place. Not everyone can afford a 600-1000 dollar software package(nor should they need it), but this is just 1 dollar.

OMG....you pirated a .99 cent game...How cheap are you! It's aholes like this that's going to keep people from creating decent DRM free games....I don't care how you justify it stealing is stealing.

in this case, i can't defend pirates, only because the price is ridiculously low. but still, the argument part is good, are you so rich you waste your money. 1$ is 1/3 of an work hour worth in Croatia in which i live in, so in any case this is a small money. and you buy 100 useless products, is 100$ no money to. Some sort of test drive should be mandatory, so buyer/consumer can protect him self from fraud. Because as pirates do crack games and aps constantly and that is not legal, the shit that is selling under all moist fraud description is all most illegal as pirates.

These guys got publicity because of this hacker, now their sales will increase significantly. Will they share any of the profits with the hacker? I guess not.

At a dollar they are charging more per dollar capital than almost every $50 game out there. This game is way more overpriced than Crysis which cost $22 million to make. Regardless, it is still stealing. We live in a capitalist economy so if the game is not worth $1 or $50 then don't buy it and send the developers a clear message, not "it may be worth every penny but I am too much of a sleazebag to actually pay you for your work so I'll just steal it and hope you can make a living off the honest people, and that that will be enough for you to keep making games so I can further destroy your livelihood."

The crakcer's arguement is flawed not on basis of price but reasoning: yes many applications are garbage and the description doesn't do justice to how the program really will work, but by cracking the game he has made himself judge and jury as to whether or not it really is good, deciding for everyone. There are independent review sites and user ratings for this sort of thing, yes user ratings can be flawed so then hit the review sites. Does the cracker really believe he is right in deciding for everyone if the game is good or not, and he has the right to make it freely distributable therefor?

Also, in the case of the game he cracked, the description and title both state its a wack-a-mole. I've played the game, and the description is actually pretty spot on. I can image a car buyer reading about a car with four wheels, carpet, a drivetrain and a method of steering and stopping, and a notice that says this is all there is to the car, and then the buyer saying "well, it doesn't tell me everything, I should steal it to see if it is exactly as they say!" My response to any such person who'd make that statement would be as follows: "Dumbass, your mother must be ashamed."

Thats exactly what I feel toward the hacker at the moment. Oh, and to the Croatian who somehow tried to justify the hacker: the iPhone costs several hundred Euros in Europe, so you do really expect us to believe that someone who could afford the phone in the first place really would care about $1 applications? Secondly, who's fault is it that a consumer bought 100 applications, the developers or the buyer? Those descriptions are called advertising, advertising is made so idiots will throw money on a product. There is no consumer protection device possible that protects a consumer who is a royal dumbass in all aspects of life. I'm reminded of a customer I had once, I told him that Compact Flourescent lighbulbs consume less energy than incandescent, and the only real draw back was they could be brighter and they had Mercury in them. A week later he came into the store mad as can be because I hadn't told him Mercury was harmful.

This hacker is why we have DRM. I think he should spend a little jail time and pay back every dollar he stole.

I think everyone is in the wrong here.

The person who originally stole the software needs to stop and consider whether or not his cardboard box inquisition is really worth the trouble. People have been writing bad software for decades now, and even if he was able to make everything free tomorrow they would still write that bad software. The only thing people like him do is make it less profitable for people to write great software.

The people who wrote the software need to understand that they wrote frickin WACK-A-MOLE. They should be kissing the feet of whoever owns the rights to that IP for not stringing them up for infringement. 250 man hours spent writing wack-a-mole means they weren't very good at managing the project to begin with. Learn your place and get back to work on whatever Deer Hunter clone sequel you were on before.

I don't even know why I bother to answer but everyone is talking about right and wrong as if there is an answer, let everyone decide for themselves the answers to the real questions here. Right and wrong isn't always the same as legal/illegal and the different legal systems across the globe are highlighting this issue

On the crackers side arguments:

1) Should every user be entitled to a demo/preview of an app (regardless of price)?
2) Do you really think that crackers crack applications for profit or do they do it for the fun of it and gain nothing in return (yes crackers buy or get the software by legal means) apart from a shine of fame?
3) Did the "offended couple" get publicity for their game, by exploiting the pirate situation?
4) Do you think that any DRM and the likes except quantum encryption will not break eventually?
5) Does the opposing force of pirated software impose prices that are more appropriate for the product?

To the developers' side arguments:
1) Does sometimes piracy shrink the electronic software market minimizing profits to the limit of mere viability?


To everyone: please use your brains a little more than you already do, the world shouldn't be the way "they" want, it should be the way we the free people/users want. We have power - look at the DRM removal from mp3s from the iTune store. We control the market and we should stop acting like the guardian dogs of the system. Increased piracy in iPhone apps could lead to the establishment of a demo system for apps

If you go after a $0.99 iPhone game then you are a pretty useless hacker...

whot a dickhead i bet he would not like it if he had gone into work and done 250hrs and not got payed for it

what the hacker has a lot of truth to it believe it or not. The hacker states that the most people who are writing the code are, mediocre programmers with a dream of getting rich quick, which is true to a certain extent. I think hacker has no right to do it, but there is way to much crap on the app store.

What a lowlife piece of crap. It's not about the price, it's stealing, pure and simple. I don't expect these people to buy the game, but I do expect them to be honest about their intentions instead of coming up with this garbage justification. It's an insult, pure and simple.

I wouldn't be so pissed off if they just said, "we steal because we can, so deal with it."

ah it's not STEALING guys...it's COPYING which is completely different. Don't listen to the RIAA/MPAA hype that it is a 'criminal' act that has somehow deprived the owners of the material. While not agreeing with the hacker's reasoning all I can say is I'm pretty certain the people that have downloaded the game would not have bought it anyway.

And...in doing so the hacker hasn't really reduced sales (all that much I would imagine) but in fact spread the word so to speak. Just think, if MS-DOS and Windows weren't so copied Microsoft probably wouldn't have cornered so much of the market initially.

I believe they will probably sell more than they would have had it not been hacked. Stealing is depriving them of the possibility of using/selling it, copying it does not cause them any more costs (e.g. in manufacturing) than if it never got hacked.

yeah honestly I don't blame the cracker as he was just doing what he does, its a compulsion... But the cheap skates that actually downloaded it, should be shamed in public their identities should be released as they broke the EULA anyways! that is just sad!

virus makers are no different to the hacker here.
i think the developers can find a way to prevent it from happening.

How low.

To mr. most_uniQue, take a step back and look at what you've done. Read over your excuse for your actions. Read it again, then have someone else read it to you. You need to realize that in this case, your argument doesn't make sense. It's whack-a-mole, it says that in the description. your "subtle" insults to these two people are revolting to me.

These people put a lot of time into what they were doing, I can't remember a single point in my life that I was working on a single project for 250 hours. They could have been building a garage for somebody, they could have been making custom computer cases, but instead they chose to make some money by making a game.

Thanks to you, this couple have yet to see a dime past the point where they break even financially. Imagine yourself, spending hours upon hours working on some project, maybe a new webpage for somebody, and then I came in and took a hammer to your hard drive because I didn't like the website you were making the page for. I've just taken your time and effort and did whatever I wanted with it.

You know what's the saddest thing about all this? Your thoughtless actions hurt me, the legitimate consumer.

i guess the economy is bad but not this bad, lol. it's only .99 wtf is this world coming to. anyone can learn how to hack software, but they don't, you know why? we have a life.

If anything I'd say that this is a prime example of why we need to move towards free apps and more advertising. Most of the best software I use everyday is free and I don't mind the adds.

And as joxer stated, this has nothing to do with stealing, and in reality is no worse than downloading music or movies (free).

I have to say as a retail in the game market and a consumer that if you were going to download a cracked game or software you most likely weren't going to buy it in the first place.
but i mean come on its not like they are trying to sell there game for a tenner its one pound/euro/dollar

Offer a trial. 99 cents or otherwise, I don't like getting hosed.

The only thing I can find good in cracking a 1$ game is that all software has to have a demo or a trial. Doesn't matter the cost of the software even if it was for 50 cents it should have had a demo to it.

i somehow agree with the hacker in what regards the motives: i feel too that some sotware companies seek glory and success in a very short term overpricing their product. playing pirated games gave me the opportunity to understand that some games are rubbish and full of s..t before spending a vey high 49.99 on them. I must add here that i do own personally software worth of more than 1000USD at this momment but i must appreciate the hacker for he/she gave me the chance to spend my money right. But that is in principle. The 0.99 game discussed here is much too cheap to be treated the same way. So here the principle applied is wrong.

The cracker/hacker has the whole "Robin Hood" attitude, but in all, he still stole someone's work and it's a measly 99¢ app. I think the Itunes store should have a mandatory demo listing for all apps on the store and a editor's review stating if it's worth your hard earned dollar.

I'm wondering who'd actually even bother looking for a cracked version of a game costing that little?
I mean - the effort of even having to get a torrent client - or opening then one you have, is already more than the effort of actually spending the equivalent of a coinoffer, on a homepage.

I have pirated stuff for convenience mostly. When it's easier to buy the stuff than steal it, there's no point left at all to steal it.

I don't agree completely with the whole arguement of this story being as free advertising for the developers. Given the fact that before this story I had never known of the wack-a-mole app and after I read the story I now know that the game exists and even more importantly I know it is obtainable for free. So yes the news story is good in that it gives product awareness but at same time you aren't going to get many sales because of the same news story says you can get it free.