321run.com

Sorry, we’re closed. It’s the message people usually see when Apple has new offers to publish on its Store. Unfortunately, I have to close for several days too, but not for the same enjoyable reasons.

I noticed from several web sites and while googling “321Run” that the paid version has been pirated over and over. I have no problem with pirats who have a anarchist behaviour, saying “we unlock your app to test it and buy it if it’s good”. Except this is false in my case. There is a free version with the free word in the title and the free word in the features. So unlocking the app has only things to do with being able to spare 5 or 6 euros on a 600 euros device (the real price, unsubsidized). Sure, that’s the price of two cigarette packs in France, that makes a horribly expensive app.

That’s bad karma for them.

That’s why I tried to detect pirated versions. The goal was to provide an alert sending them to the AppStore so they could buy the real version. If they still didn’t want to buy it, ok, they only had that alert once per session. No crippling the app, no forced bug, no features disappearing.

Unfortunately the detection relies on the size of some files, which are apparently modified by Apple when releasing the app. I was unaware of that: a version with detection was already on the appstore and worked perfectly. So when you have paid for the app, you get an awful message saying you pirated the app and advising you to go to the AppStore. Each time.

I woke up this morning to two new emails: one to tell me my version was released, and the other one from a user who discovered painfully the issue. I did what has to be done:

I pulled the app from the Store

That means no sales for several days, the time for the review team to get to my app. But really I only blame myself. I destroyed all the code that detected pirated versions. I re-submitted the app. Now, I am waiting.

What can be concluded?

• Don’t mess with that kind of code.
• The review process still needs some incident tickets to help get on top of the review pile, like a Wonka gold ticket.
• You need to be able to downgrade the version on the AppStore
• You need to be able to test the version that is released before hand

I learned all this the hard way.