Apple Thoughts: Pirating Quantified

"When Web Scouts, Inc. wrote its tank warfare game iCombat for the iPhone, the company put a few extra lines of code into the application. The code checked the size of the application's .plist and, if the files size differed from what it was when the company packaged the application, it would phone home."

So by checking the .plist file size, they were able to tell how many of the apps had actually been pirated since this file changes in size when it is cracked. Then during a certain period of time they had the application "phone home" and report file sizes. Get this: they found that 74% of the games out there had been pirated, 74%! Comparing it during the testing period they found the ratio of pirated to legit games was roughly 4 to 1. Ouch. This is an interesting article on how they tracked it and what they found, as well as their perspective on what this means to their company.