Just a quick question. . .re: mods and updates.

[ShaggyDave]

Firstly, massive thank you's to everyone at SBenny.com who put time and effort into making brilliant MODs for us all to enjoy

My question is, due to the more popular apps and games being constantly updated monthly, or even sometimes weekly, with new content/bug fixes, is there not some way of allowing Modded .apks to have access to the updates from the google store?
I've often wondered why this doesn't seem to be possible, as it would surely save Modders a huge amount of time by not having to constantly re-release updated .apks of the same game/app,

Thanks again guys.

 

[ShaggyDave]

I should have said Google Play - where the majority of games are downloaded and updated from.

 

[ShaggyDave]

Having thought about it, I can see now where the problem lies.
Is there no way of inserting a piece of code into the MODded Apk which fools it into believing it's a genuine Google Play Store download?
It's because it's an APK that they won't update as normal.

 

[CordeliaCross]

Heya @ShaggyDave

Your suggestion is a really cool idea, but unfortunately we wouldn't be able to do something like that. When a Mod APK is created a modder downloads the app from the Google Play store, breaks down the file and alters the code. Then they seal the file back up and compress it so that your device recognizes it as an update (an in-between half-version if you will). At that point, when the app would try to update from Google Play it would download the new version that the Developer posted to Google play. Because their new version of the app doesn't have any of the modifications that the modder made to the older version, the modded features wouldn't carry over to an update from google play. Each time a game gets updated, the modders have to download the original, reprogram the code for the mod, re-compile the APK and upload and release it all over again.

It would be so great if we could just download an update from google play and the mod from the older version could take over, but it doesn't really work that way. Besides, if it did, it would make it easier for Google to see the modifications that are made to the app and those users would have a far greater risk of getting banned for cheating.

I hope this helps, and if you have any other ideas please let us know!

@CordeliaCross