Unlocking Final Fantasy III on OUYA

One of the few OUYA games that my ouya-plain-purchases Xposed module did not unlock was Final Fantasy III: Its developers wrote code that makes the game crash when a running Xposed module is found.

Now nearly two years after my investigation, OUYA Saviors member ZacharyFoxx found a solution: Convert the Xposed module from a normal user-installed app into a system app.

The only difference between them is that user applications are installed in /data/app/, while system apps are located in /system/app/. The /system/ partition is mounted read-only on the OUYA, so it takes some more steps to move it.

HowTo

If plain purchases is not already installed, use the OUYA interface and go to Make > Tutorials and install it.

If you already enabled the plain purchases module, you have to disable it at first in the Xposed settings.

Now connect your OUYA via USB to your computer and use adb to execute the following steps:

$ adb shell
$ su
$ mount -o rw,remount -t ext4 /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/APP
$ cp /data/app/de.cweiske.ouya.plainpurchases-1.apk /system/app/
$ rm /data/app/de.cweiske.ouya.plainpurchases-1.apk
$ mount -o ro,remount -t ext4 /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/APP
$ exit
$ exit
$ adb reboot

The issue can finally be closed.

Update 2023-11: One user mentioned that he had to disable the OUYA Xposed "Mod Collection" to get it working (after rebooting).

Written by Christian Weiske.

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