Protecting Mobile Game Revenues by Blocking Distribution of Cracked APKs, Introduction to LIAPP Application Cases
The mobile game market continues to grow every year and generates huge revenues worldwide. However, there is a fatal problem that hinders this growth: the illegal distribution of cracked APKs. Many game developers are seriously suffering from in-app payment revenues due to this, and it is even threatening the survival of the game.
Today, we would like to share a successful story of protecting game app revenues by focusing on the case of applying ‘LIAPP, a mobile security service’ to solve this problem.
What is a cracked APK?
A cracked APK refers to an app that was decompiled by a hacker and repackaged or redistributed with security disabled.
Most of these apps are illegally distributed for the following purposes:
• Bypassing in-app payments
• Removing advertisements
• Providing unlimited in-game resources (e.g. gold, diamonds, items, etc.)
• Inserting malicious code
Ultimately, normal users suffer losses and developers lose revenue.
Real losses due to bypassing in-app payments
The most important revenue model for mobile games is ‘in-app payments (IAP)’. Users can purchase desired items while enjoying the game or pay for quick growth. However, users using cracked APKs can enjoy all these benefits without going through the normal payment process.
In fact, a small and medium-sized game company experienced a decrease of more than 30% in total sales in a month after distributing cracked APKs, and faced a situation where normal users even left due to cracked files being indiscriminately shared in the community.
Preventing forgery and repackaging with LIAPP
In this situation, the game company introduced ‘LIAPP,’ a mobile app security service. LIAPP provides real-time forgery detection and repackaging prevention functions, thereby realizing the following security effects.
Key security features applied
1. APK forgery detection
• Real-time file integrity verification, blocking execution of modified apps
2. Repackaging prevention
• Identify abnormal packaging by verifying app signature integrity
3. Debugging prevention and rooting detection
• Preemptively blocking hackers from analyzing or manipulating apps
4. App analysis tool detection
• Detects and automatically terminates representative hacking tools such as Frida, Xposed, and Lucky Patcher
Effects after applying security
After strengthening security, game companies experienced noticeable performance improvements.
• Blocking illegal users by setting the app to automatically terminate when using cracked APKs
• Sharp decrease in sharing within the community as cracked files that were being distributed became useless
• Increased payment rate and return visit rate of normal users
• Improved reliability by announcing the fact of security enhancement
Above all, it was possible to kill two birds with one stone: sales recovery and user base stabilization.
Game security, join LIAPP!
As much effort was put into game development, it is also very important to safely protect the resulting app. In particular, for mobile games that rely on in-app payments as their main source of revenue, security is not an option but a must.
‘LIAPP’ is a global service that provides powerful security features with simple application without complex development knowledge.
I highly recommend that game developers who are concerned about the distribution of cracked APKs take a look at it.
Let’s protect the game we created together.
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