Game copying - days numbered?

mr_angry

FINALLY - an anti-piracy policy that makes sense. Game developers have developed anti-piracy software that ruins a gamer's ability to play the game, while still getting them hooked.

See this link for more information.

[CrimsonGhost]

Not that I advocate copying games, but surely turning of error correcting will stop the issue arising, plus nocd crack abound on the net.

The bit on copied DVDs having something similar is null and void. DivX them, or rip them to VCD and the problem would be sorted.

Although, if you play a game you should buy it, the developers need to put food on their childrens dinner plates!

CivilServant

I've heard of time type of anti piracy device before. It doesn't seem to have worked in the past. And probably won't work in the future. Either way anti ant-piracy will conquer all.

tHE vAGGABOND

developers from Microsoft to bedroom developers spend a lot of time and money on copy protection and have yet to develop one that stops the warez people..

We had total nightmares with SecurRom protection with CM4 - among a whole host of problems we had, and could do nothing about (due to our publisher having a long term contract with SecuRom), the game would not start sometimes if the user had Nero installed, its not like nero is not popular or anything. But the worlds most popular cd copying software, that most cd-rw's get bundled with is a hacker tool Im told *looks to the sky*

All copy protection does is piss off users as far as I can see. If I had my way I would have a simple check to see there is a game CD in the drive, and then start the game - no point in pissing off people who actually have the game

savemejebus

methinks soloutions such as the one outlined above are only going to be effective if the developers just keep their mouths shut and stop bragging about how smart their systems are and how they work, because knowing how something works is always the first step to getting round it. I mean if they just installed that system, saying nothing where would the problem be.

Someone useing warez isn't really going to complain to the software company that their cracked game doesn't work are they?

TheDuke

The best 'crack' in the world is the no-CD crack...

For the record, I always buy my games! ¡V play the demo and if I like it invest¡K

But I hate using CD's which get un-recognisably scratches so when my system finally folds due to a ravaging virus I need to go and buy another copy... it has happened you know.

I can not understand why no one ever comes up with an internet pirate copy catalogue. All serious players play on-line, so why not get the GameSpy and ASE and all the official game servers to record game ID¡¦s (the ones you need to punch in to install) ¡V if these appear 10+ times you know you¡¦ve got a crack and then just bar these from the sites. This would stop anyone handing out their code.

I may be missing something here, but to agree with the rest of you guys, cracking CD protection is every 11 year olds passion these days ¡K and hasn¡¦t worked, so far so why bother continually re-inventing a wheel that just won¡¦t get any rounder! :rolleyes:

The Duke : ))

Rew

Originally posted by savemejebus
methinks soloutions such as the one outlined above are only going to be effective if the developers just keep their mouths shut and stop bragging about how smart their systems are and how they work, because knowing how something works is always the first step to getting round it. I mean if they just installed that system, saying nothing where would the problem be.

Security through obscurity isn't security...

Look at public key encryption, its all open and published and secure. Its been checked by any one who could be arsed to check...

TheDuke

Rew - nice point... and how short, sweet and WUP ASS

savemejebus

I think you're missing my point, I just think that if you go around saying "hey i've got this super fantastic security system that no-one can break" and then give details on how it works you're practically challenging people to try and crack the system.

pat kenny

Yeah a few games like opperation flashpoint used that fade technology, it didnt seem to work very well and cracks seemed to sort it out.

Matt Simis

From my OFP days, I remember reading about how no one could ever confirm actually "seeing" this Fade technology in effect. I once installed my legit copy of OFP on two PCs, to try and coax some people into playing multi .

Eventually we bought the addons and used those legit CDs to play, but before that I saw the Fade warning but no effects of it. Forums were rife with talk that Fade was a marketing gimmick and never existed at all. There were even cases where bugs in the game (OFP was very buggy on release) were mistaken for Fade.

Id love to know where they got "Following its success with Operation Flashpoint, Codemasters is also using Fade with a new snooker game. "



Matt

Matt Simis

Originally posted by TheDuke


I can not understand why no one ever comes up with an internet pirate copy catalogue. All serious players play on-line, so why not get the GameSpy and ASE and all the official game servers to record game ID¡¦s (the ones you need to punch in to install) ¡V if these appear 10+ times you know you¡¦ve got a crack and then just bar these from the sites. This would stop anyone handing out their code.


The Duke : ))

That exists, and has done for some time. You've never got the "CD Key in use" warning from basically any multiplayer game then? People handing out their CD keys are rarely the problem, its cracks and key gens that sometime produces valid but already in use CD keys that mess things up.

Generally, however, if you want to play a game on the net you need a legit key.

The super advanced copy protection schemes really cater to single player games.


Matt

Gummy Panda

I seen a copy of Operation flashpoint with the piracy software working. You couldn't shot straight or anything. Game was totally unplayable.

You got to see how fun it looked and then couldn't play.

Dr4gul4

FADE is old hand new it's been on the scene 4 ages now and has been beaten hands down, 4 every coder developing protection for cd's there will be 10 crackers waitin to tear the code apart, it's just the facts of life, look at the X-box i mean u can run linux off the feckin thing,

Piracy will never go away, but in sayin dat if u like a game and u buy it u are THEN fully entitled to back the cd image up


dats my 2 cents



D.

IrishMike

That protection was cracked months and months ago
Copy protection will never work as its 2 damn easy to circumvent
Besides there are millions and millions of people who get warez
They are not goin 2 stop just because someone made a new protection
Its like that audio format that the RIAA said was totally uncrackable
It lasted a full 2 weeks :rolleyes:

gimme

anything that has 1s and 0s will eventually be cracked.

ssh

As long as you can see what instructions go in and out of the CPU, you can do just about anything to it, legally too (assuming you legally obtained it, which is how I get all of my software).

4 or 5 years ago, CD copy protection could be bypassed by overwriting a single instruction with a NOOP. As SafeDisk and its buddies have progressed, the process is somewhat more complex... typically you'll have to trick the software into not realizing that a debugger is running, but it's still doable with enough time and skill.

Even on it's lowest level, the checks to ensure that a cd is real (or indeed present) is a matter of looking up one bit. If you ensure that that bit is set the way the game expects, it won't know any different.

The point is, until what goes into the CPU is encrpyted, it's possible to see exactly when it is checking for the CD. Even then, writing custom trap handlers to output the raw code of the game are possible. I don't have a problem with CD-checks, it deters schoolyard piracy. I will have a problem with it when I am legally denied my right to fiddle with software for which I paid good money.

(Mods, I read the charter and I think my post is okay...)

Pugsley

People will find a way around it pretty quickly, people always do somewhere or another.

Say something is unhackable, it will be hacked. say something is piracy proof it will be pirated. install windows, it will get linux installed somewhere (the last one is from the x-box )

peterk19

just turn off error correction which can be done with most plextor drives from memory of my college days

Shinji

The only copy protection that can't be broken is CD key based protection that phones home to a master server. This works very well for multiplayer games - Half-Life and Quake3 are good examples. It works less well for singleplayer games, because people don't appreciate having to be connected to the net at all times in order to play, but don't be surprised if you start seeing it increasingly in singleplayer anyway. Valve's Steam system is the first step down this road...

It's all just more nails in the coffin of PC gaming really. Publishers love consoles because as a general rule, there are far fewer thieving little gits around on them....

ssh

Phone home authentication can be broken relatively easily. You spoof the DNS of the master server (which is simple, for raven shield, a small change to the hosts file bypassed this for LAN play) and monitor what exactly the client and server send back and forth (capturing the data is simple, decoding it is not. It is doable however).

Sure, developers can keep objuscating it further and further, but as long as you can take a memory dump and have some control over the network stack on some network interface between you and the server, it's weak. Until Untrustable computing is rammed down our throats, it'll always be breakable by someone focussed enough.

I'm strongly in favour of the Music, Film and Software industries hounding down those who can't be arsed paying for things, but they lose my respect when they attempt to have anti-consumer hardware and even legislation forced upon us.

BoB_BoT

Game copying - days numbered?

hold down shift










lol

Syth

Ignoring the carck-ability of this new system, I think the idea of a game that slowly becomes unplayable is a bad idea. I f you play a game and it slowly gets worse and annoying, you'll get irrated by it and probably won't want to see it again, so you're not really going to go out and buy it.

Shinji

You spoof the DNS of the master server (which is simple, for raven shield, a small change to the hosts file bypassed this for LAN play) and monitor what exactly the client and server send back and forth (capturing the data is simple, decoding it is not. It is doable however).

This approach works fine until the point where you actually want to do something with one of the game servers - be it playing online, downloading a patch or new content or whatever. That's going to be the most effective method of piracy protection - value added content or functionality which simply can't be used without a valid CD key.

jonski

Hmmm , my 2 cents on this has always been as follows .

Game distributers have always said that their prices were high because of piracy . Game developers deserve to be paid for their work . So
A: if you develope anti piracy technology that you think will not be broken , then you should reduce the price of the game , ie:BF1942 needs a cd key to be played online , its fundamentally an online game but i had to pay 49.99 euro for it , how come the price wasn't reduced ?
B:If the games were cheaper I really feel more ppl would buy them , I can't aford 49.99 or more for a game that might be ****e and I'm only buying because of a review in a magazine that cost a tenner .

i know these arguments have been put forward before , but i actually believe them .

John.

Shinji

Game distributers have always said that their prices were high because of piracy

I've very rarely heard this argument made, and never heard it come from anyone with any real experience of the industry or clue. Piracy certainly doesn't help game prices, but at the end of the day prices are dictated by market forces of which piracy is only a very very small one.

Your second argument is a bit crazy to be honest. DVDs cost less than half the price of games, and yet the internet is flooded with Divx rips of DVDs. Music CDs cost about a third of the price, and that doesn't stop people from having gigs and gigs of MP3s. Price clearly doesn't have a huge impact on rates of piracy.

jonski

Originally posted by Shinji
I've very rarely heard this argument made,

heard it loads of times


Your second argument is a bit crazy to be honest. DVDs cost less than half the price of games, and yet the internet is flooded with Divx rips of DVDs.

movies are something u watch once , I don't condone it but i understand it.


Music CDs cost about a third of the price, and that doesn't stop people from having gigs and gigs of MP3s.

music is where it all started really , and most ppl use the excuse that they ' dont want the full cd , just a song here and there '


Price clearly doesn't have a huge impact on rates of piracy.

how do we know , never seen them drop the price because of anti piracy measures ?

anyways , just posting another point of view .

TheDuke

as for the cost of games you need to do a cost v hours of pleasure analysis.

50 E's on a Fiday night will get you through 3-4 hours, it will get you two dvd's which are approx. 4-5 hrs (unless you are a buff and need to watch everyininthg a zillion times) and now lets get to a game...

I bought MOH at approx. €50 and have played it for the past year and a bit on average for 4 hourse PER WEEK.... the same would go for Day of Defeat (although dated currently by most favorite game - allot of really sound guys playining and great team feel to it)....

So, chose the game wisely and if it's good then the cost per hour is cents...

As for the cost of piracy and the fact the we supposedly need to carry the cost.... lets look at that government of ours first as they are screwing us from all angles (and not in the nice sense of the word) than any one... at least we can choose NOT to be screwed by game producers ... :mad:

The Duke : ))

KdjaCL

Unless you actually mould each cd one by one with a specific cd key made for that cd only then will game copying stop.
As it is now its an image ona cd that can be copied burned as much as you want to with nothing to stop you.
This new MAcrovision thing will only work for about a week until certain cd burning software figures it out and cracks it.

As someone said the only way is online cd key authenciation nothin else works ,nothing else will ever work on cds.

kdjac

ssh

Originally posted by Shinji
This approach works fine until the point where you actually want to do something with one of the game servers - be it playing online, downloading a patch or new content or whatever. That's going to be the most effective method of piracy protection - value added content or functionality which simply can't be used without a valid CD key.

This is true, I thought we were talking about offline play or LAN play.

I think it is at least encouraging that people have embraced keycode authentication for online play. I guess if you pay for something you are less likely to behave like a muppetron...

Hobbes

This tech is far from new.

The Amiga had two games many years ago that were just like this.

First one was a flight sim that you played and after 2 minutes a mig comes out of nowhere and no matter what you did the plane would blow you away.

The other was Dungeon Master (or maybe dungeons and dragons? I forget). You could play for about 5 minutes then a monster appeared and slaughtered your whole group no matter where you went.

In one case before the protection was known (the flight sim) people were saying the game was crap because it was the pirates reviewing the game for others.

In the case of the RPG they just patched it out.

Fade isn't new either, it was in Operation Flashpoint.

bricks

The police used to ask you for the registration details to confirm that you owned the ship you were in.
And then it used to ask you about words from the manual.
If you got it wrong, They police opened fire and you were dead:(

mr_angry

Originally posted by bricks
The police used to ask you for the registration details to confirm that you owned the ship you were in.
And then it used to ask you about words from the manual.
If you got it wrong, They police opened fire and you were dead:(

Haha! Genius! I wonder if that falls under the category of "context aware"?

Hobbes

In Sam and Max (some versions) you were expected to dress Sam and Max in drag in order to play the game.

darktooth

Publishers have been claiming that if there was no piracy games would be cheaper. It is getting more difficult to copy games and yet prices are still going up.

If games cost only €5 no one would copy them.

CDs, DVDs, tapes and games are overpriced. Everyone knows it and uses it to justify piracy. Look at all the free CDs being given away in newspapers, the cost price is obviously sfa.

savemejebus

CDs themselves are dirt cheap, but it's the content thats expensive. Papers and magazines can give away cds with songs from 70s and 80s because they don't have to pay huge royalties to use the songs. You hardly ever see these cds containing new songs, other than b-sides and when you do you know that the papers are doing a favour for the record companies.

Dvds are still expensive enought (i think) and one trick that a couple of magazines in spain use is claiming to give away a free dvd of a certain tv show and once you get home you see that where DVD is written in big letters it's usually just promoting a soon to be released dvd and what you've actually got is a vcd. Some mags over here do it too, happened with one mag just before the red dwarf box set came out, they gave away a free vcd with an ep. and some special features on it but gave the impression it was a free dvd

KdjaCL

CD is technically free to have one made and DVD is heading that way too.
But to include any sort of on disc protection is stupid as it will be cracked, Cd key is great but also flawed.
A certain OS maker has a great looking cd key idea to the consumer, but if the consumer seen how the cd keys were generated and under what conditions wouldnt feel so great about it then.

kdjac