Publisher Square Enix yesterday released its hotly anticipated Deus Ex: The Fall onto the App Store. Soon after, it was discovered the premium game unfortunately employs a little unusual Easter egg of sorts: if you’re jailbroken, The Fall won’t let you fire guns.
Developer Eidos Montreal is obviously a little concerned about piracy because last time I checked jailbreaking was still legal, even if it voids your warranty.
The Fall isn’t the first app to hobble gameplay on jailbroken devices. Just two quick examples: DirectTV and Game Dev Tycoon. If you’re jailbroken and bought the game, don’t despair as there’s a jailbreak tweak to remove the pesky limitation…
Seen top of post: the warning The Fall puts up on jailbroken devices after a player has completed a movement tutorial. Even though the game can be played through entirely in stealth mode, completing the tutorial cunningly requires tranquilizing the guards before continuing.
Although blogs credit Redditor KipEnyan for discovering the issue and the gaming blog Kotaku for reporting it, we actually had several reports of that on Twitter – that’s why we updated our original post yesterday.
Anyway, the solution is the xCon tweak by @n00neimp0rtant, available from the ModMyI repo in Cydia.
Just respring your device and you’re ready to roll.
Designed to bypass jailbreak detection in iOS apps and games, this tweak supports a number of popular applications, such as Amazon’s Instant Video streaming app and many other applications.
I believe Square and Eidos shot themselves in the foot.
Jailbroken users who paid seven bucks for the game took to iTunes, posting a number of negative reviews that criticize Square’s move.
“I understand protecting the app against cracking/pirating, but preventing paying customers from playing on a device they own and legally modified is ridiculous,” one reviewer wrote.
It would have been much nicer if Square and Eidos at least had the decency to mention the restriction in iTunes release notes. This way, they’re alienating jailbreakers who want to do the right thing and pay for the game.
Deus Ex: The Fall weighs in at a massive 1.6 gigabytes and is available now from the App Store for your iPad 3 or above, iPad mini, iPhone 4S or above, or fifth-generation iPod touch. Support for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 is coming soon via a future update.