Deus Ex: The Fall on jailbroken iOS devices won't fire guns

In a clever, and dare I say comical, effort to combat piracy, gamers with jailbroken iOS devices who play Deus Ex: The Fall can't fire any guns.

Joystiq reports:

Those playing Deus Ex: The Fall, which launched for iOS for $6.99, on jailbroken iDevices have found none of their guns work -- not even the tranquilizer gun. 

The limitation was first outed on Reddit, with many reviews in the App store describing the game's surprise "feature." The prompt above occurs right after the movement tutorial in the game, at the outset of the shooting tutorial.

While this is certainly an interesting way to combat piracy, the problem is that not every user with a jailbroken device engages in piracy. What's more, the app is expensive, as far as mobile apps go, and any honest folks with jailbroken devices who purchased the app are effectively out US$6.99.

Speaking of combating piracy, the funniest story that comes to mind is when Greenheart Games released Game Dev Tycoon and released a "pirated" version of the software title to see how rampant piracy would be.

The rub, however, is that users with the pirated software who attempted to build their own virtual game development company ran into virtual piracy themselves.

The cracked version is nearly identical to the real thing except for one detail... Initially we thought about telling them their copy is an illegal copy, but instead we didn't want to pass up the unique opportunity of holding a mirror in front of them and showing them what piracy can do to game developers. So, as players spend a few hours playing and growing their own game dev company, they will start to see the following message, styled like any other in-game message:

"Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don't buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt."

• Read also: The hands-down best platform games for iPhone and iPad

Data source: via TUAW (by Yoni Heisler)