Gamevil Begins Blocking Rooted Users

After doing my nightly app updates this morning I accidentally launched Legend of Master 3 when checking what updated. To my surprise I was greeted by Superuser asking to give Legend of Master 3 root permissions. After promptly passing on that (yeah, games shouldn't ever need root) I was greeted by a splash screen reading "Rooting is detected! The game will be terminated." So it appears as though Gamevil is now attempting to thwart piracy and hacking by simply blocking rooted users. This approach will fail on a couple levels:

1. Gamevil's Ratings Will Plummet

Gamevil releases free games, which means all those rooted users will be granted permission to write a review of said games. Are rooted users simply going to accept that they can't play the game? No. You can expect that every rooted user that hits this wall will immediately run to the Play Store and drop their rating to 1 star. This will in turn tarnish the reputation of each of Gamevil's games they choose to implement this to.

2. Gamevil is only hurting the ethical customers

Let's face it, rooting is big with Android devices. I root everything I have, but it's completely for backing up my paid apps, doing screenshots on Gingerbread (and below), and connecting controllers. So many people like me, valid potential customers, are going to be chased away. The hackers however, will find a work around (shortly I'm sure) and will turn around and thwart the root check. Effectively they are keeping their problem customers while chasing away potential good customers.

Despite seeming to be a good idea, Gamevil has made a horrible misstep here. There's also no telling if this new anti-root measure will be passed on to other games. For now it looks like they are using Legend of Master 3 as a test case, so make sure to let them know how much you love it!