Released yesterday for iOS Deus Ex: The Fall is all about giving the player options, unless that player is attempting to run the game on a jailbroken iPhone or iPad, in which case it removes one of the most important abilities in the game — pulling the trigger.
Encountered by Redditor KipEnyan and verified by several user reviews in the app store, jailbroken players starting up the first mobile instalment of the Deus Ex series are treated to a few cutscenes and a movement tutorial before running into the message above. It comes up during the game’s shooting tutorial, and while one would assume players could still stealth through the game, I’m not sure they can progress beyond that point without tranquilising those guards.
Mind you, this isn’t pirates running into this issue. While I am sure there are some shady players attempting to get The Fall to run on their jailbroken iPads and iPhones, there are plenty of honest folks who dropped $7.49 on the game, only to have it treat them like pirates.
Jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad is a completely legal (though warranty breaking) means of bypassing Apple’s restrictions, allowing the running of homebrew apps, games and utilities. There is a rich community of developers testing the limits and enhancing the functionality of Apple’s products via unapproved apps, supported by users hungry for the sort of innovation that community fosters.
The tactic Eidos Montreal has employed here is not widely utilized, for the very reason the handful of folks in the iTunes reviews for The Fall are so upset. It alienates honest users who still purchase their games and apps via the App Store, while presenting an obstacle that’s easily bypassed by pirates. All one needs to do is figure out how to trick the game into thinking it’s running on a non-jailbroken device. It’s the sort of thing you could come up with via a simple Google search.
We’ve reached out to Eidos parent Square Enix for comment on Deus Ex: The Fall‘s anti-jailbreaking countermeasures, and will update this post once we get a response.
Comments
55 responses to “Eidos Disables Your Guns In iOS Deus Ex, If Your Device Is Jailbroken”
3 cheers for AAA publishers bringing their draconian bullshit to mobile platforms
Hip hip! Terrible move, for shame Square.
A quick Google search shows the pirated version has been fixed so you only get this message if you have the legit version.
Just like literally every other game/movie DRM ever.
of course it has, and its baffling that big players like SE et all think this will work, I am almost certain it never has, ever.
Indeed.. oh.. indeed. There are some truly good reasons to Jailbreak for gaming as well.. such as using bluetooth game controllers for one..
I could understand if Apple enforced this.. but for a publisher to do it… it’s not just draconian, it’s contrary to any reasonable business model… I mean if they were saying “You can’t fire because you are using a copy of the game that has an invalid serial number”.. well that’s fine.. but they’re not..
Retarded..
I think the bigger insult is that they made this trash instead of a proper sequel.
Exactly! I’m surprised they even managed to hear themselves make bad decisions over the chorus of no-one asking for it.
At least they’ll fire the dev team when it doesn’t achieve 20 million downloads
have you even played it?
I tried but my device was jail-broken.
weak
@earlofleisure Do you even lift, bro?
If you were a real DX fan you would have noticed one of their obvious unofficial mentions that a real sequel is in the works too. AND they are bringing the Director’s Cut to PC/X360/PS3 as well now.
When Square released Chaos Rings to Android, they blocked you from playing if you had a rooted device. I found this out after six hours of download over a crappy internet connection in a foreign country, after paying the $17 for a mobile game. Sure, they changed it later, but why is it that in their quest for money, they alienate their users? I’m sure if all pirates bought games from different countries, importing them, they’d claim that they’re still pirating, even if they bought the games legit, because they didn’t pay the markup for their specific country
And this, my friends, is complete and utter bullshit. Fuck you industry
Serves you right for not going sight seeing while overseas.
I was seeing family in a town in the middle of nowhere, and wanted to play a game on an hour long bus ride
Dick move by Square Enix, but I’m guessin it is their way of dealing with piracy of the game.
I remember when I had an iPhone and jailbroke it, there was an app that allowed you to download whole games for free. Not sure if it is still available, but jailbreaking does allow for download and installation of pirated games, so I dont think this rich community of jailbreakers are all innocent.
Except it clearly doesn’t deal with the piracy, if anything it encourages it.
of course they aren’t, jailbreaking is frequently used to pirate iOS games, but it is also a legitimate practice for many people and as piratepete points out above there is already a fix in for the pirated version. Nobody is claiming jailbreakers are all innocent, but just like DRM on the PC this is only hurting legitimate consumers.
to be fair, jailbreaking is great and has many wondrous benefits, but it’s hardly a “legitimate practice” considering you’re breaking the terms of use of your device by jailbreaking it. regardless square are pretty stupid to do this, i would hazard a guess to say that deus ex fans likely to buy this game are also more likely than non fans to jailbreak their iOS devices, so they’re biting their own base with this move.
Yeah… the thing is, this problem does not apply to the piraters, as there is a bypass for it.
All this is doing is forcing legitimate players (with jailbroken phones) to either pirate it or ignore it.
I guarantee there are people out there who were going to buy this, but will now only pirate it, just like the Assassin’s Creed fiasco.
Wonder why it isnt on PSM, then I could at least play it on my vita…
that actually makes more sense. fuck da police
I do not mean to be rude, but how is this different to the DRM in Arkham Asylum where Batman cannot glide if you have a pirated version?
The difference is, this is affecting people who paid for the game, All they are ‘guilty’ of is unlocking their phone/tablet so that they can install other things on it that apple haven’t approved of.
I don’t mean to be rude, Lortarg, but unlocking is where the phone is unlocked from its original provider. Jailbreaking is where mechanisms in iOS are disabled to modify its behaviour such as running unsigned code.
That being said, how is jailbreaking an iDevice different from running the game on a pirated version of Windows?
But I will admit, I missed the Jailbroken part on the first read (tried to squeeze it in on a work break). And I apologise for that.
On second through, scratch what I just said. That too is conceptually flawed.
One obvious difference is that you received a license to use iOS when you purchased your iPhone or iPad. In contrast, running a pirated version of Windows involves copyright infringement.
You are half right that the “Batman on Windows” and “Deus Ex on iOS” cases both involve a game detecting that its DRM has been compromised and reacting, but in the iOS case the DRM scheme also prevents many lawful uses of the device.
So rather than people seeing the game behaviour as saying “only people with a valid license can enjoy this game”, it is more like “only people who refrain from doing X can enjoy the game (where X is unrelated to the game)”. That is going to rub people the wrong way.
A jailbroken phone is still a completely legit, legal phone. The warranty no longer applies, which is fair enough. But in every other way it is still completely legitimate, so any comparisons to pirating do not apply.
This is more comparable to not being allowed to play a game because your installed windows 7 on a machine that came with windows 8
Because that could only happen on the pirated version, not the legit one.
Jailbreaking a phone doesn’t have anything to do with apps from the official App Store, it’s legal and shouldn’t affect the game at all – if anything, the cracking was accelerated because of this bullshit (see above).
Batman AA : Only on pirated versions
Deus Ex The Fall: Legit versions
Big difference.
Its similar in execution but the reasoning there was if you had a pirated copy of the game where as here the reasoning is if you have a jail-broken device.
Kind of amusing to see this coming from someone named wise hacker 😛
I’m wise, not infallible. That privilege belongs to the Pope.
since when was SquareEnix in the business of policing what people do with their iPad OS?
Edit: I mean, jail-broken tablet doesn’t necessarily mean a pirate copy of the game yeah?
Correct. Jailbreaking is legal in most countries, even the US, as it can be used to allow the operation of unsigned apps and cross-platform compatibility. All Eidos are doing here is pissing off legit consumers and violating their rights to use their legally purchased license on a legal platform.
Imagine if Steam did this.
“You cannot play xxxxxxxx because you have a downloaded copy of some obscure anime in your videos folder that is not available in your country”
Or.. you can’t play because your hardware isn’t Windows compliant.
“Sorry, this game only supports Sennheiser brand audio devices”
No light, because in this case the hardware IS still completely compliant. See aliasalpha’s comment for a more applicable example
And the obvious sarcasm was lost in the plain text communication.
Companies did this in the past. A really popular DRM in the late 90’s / early 2000’s was known for flat out refusing to let the game launch if you had Daemon Tools installed (CD/DVD emulation software.)
It was on big name games, too – like Doom 3.
And uninstalling Daemon Tools *still didn’t let you play* because the uninstaller left some registry entries. You had to know which to delete (and how to) before your games would work.
Or, just head to where most people knew to get ‘no-cd check’ software and viola! I had to crack a game I purchased legally to play.
wow. that brings back memories. Imagine if they did that today……. oh wait.
If there’s no warning in the description of this game, I’m sure people would be legally entitled to a refund under Australian law.
What Refund if you got it for free via jailbreaking and pirating it.
If they pirated it they’re not entitled to a refund of course
he means if you have a legit version on a jailbroken device I think
Ah ok, yeah i guess if its a legit version on a jailbroken device, maybe.
If you pirated it you aren’t having this problem to begin with…
Is this even legal? If the software license is legitimately bought, the developers have no legal right to disable the software, regardless of the status of the device, so long as the software is not modified as a result of the device’s status :/
Yes, they can set basically any terms within their EULA that they want. If you purchased the game legitimately though I would say that under consumer law in most countries you would be entitled to a refund… but i’m not a lawyer 🙂
The EULA is a paper tiger, and not in any way binding in preference to local laws. As such, if something is in violation of trade/consumer laws, it’s illegal even if they say they can do it in the EULA.
While that sounds nice in theory – consumer protection legislation really has very little to do with private agreements such as contracts (of which a EULA is a basic one that your agreement is implied with use of the product).
They might help you get your money back if they feel they misrepresented themselves – but not before you willingly went through the resolution process of either Apple, or the Publisher (I believe they offer a time based instant refund anyway, or at least Google and Windows Store do heh)
I’d just be leaving a 1-star rating with a warning and demand a refund. If I had bought this and found out after the fact I couldn’t play, I’d be absolutely fuming.
How these giant software corporations continue to be so naive and incompetent we’ll never know…
iPod Touch 5, NOT jail broken and the game crashes after the main menu. They can’t even make it run properly on a legit device.
Any word if they did this to the Android version too?
EDIT: Scratch that Android version is not out yet.