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Macrovision Adopts Fade Anti-Game Piracy Technology

Posted by simoniker on from the my-CD-has-disappeared dept.

Thanks to the New Scientist for their report that Macrovision are adding Fade anti-copy protection, which "makes unauthorized copies of games slowly degrade", to their SafeDisc copy protection scheme for games. The technology, devised by UK publishers Codemasters, first debuted in Operation Flashpoint for PC back in 2001, and "affects gameplay aspects" in that title if it believes the game has been altered, including "reduced accuracy of some weapons, reduced weapon performance, increased enemy hit endurance and increased player injuries." The piece also claims that Fade works by "...exploiting the systems for error correction that computers use to cope with CD-ROMs or DVDs that have become scratched."

1 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Pointless attempts? by Goldberg's+Pants · · Score: 3, Informative

    FADE does nothing of any use. Pro Race Drive/Toca Race Driver was released with this. The first two cracks weren't complete, but within a few days there was a 100% crack that works just fine. The patch came out shortly, and there were no issues with cracking that at all.

    The system can be entirely subverted by using the likes of Alcohol 120%.

    Marcovision are the biggest peddlers of silicon snake oil around. They're products DO NOT STOP COPYING. MOST DVD players can easily bypass it, you can bypass their VHS protection by cleaning up the signal, or as I do, merely pass it through an ancient betamax VCR (works with satellite PPV too), and their software copy protection is a joke.

    I mean honestly, have the jackasses at Macrovision released ANY copy protection system that wasn't circumvented within hours?

    Oh, sorry, it's "Quality Protection" isn't. Yeah, protecting the quality of their bank accounts.

    Codemasters are wankers. ANY company that rattles it's sabre and threatens sites with legal action for hosting copies of their 8-bit titles from the 80's needs to be bankrupted NOW. (Of course, preventing people from playing the godawful Dizzy series is actual a public service I think.)