Macrovision Adopts Fade Anti-Game Piracy Technology

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."

Comments

So what happens...

[DJayC]

Great... but what happens when my legit CD gets scratched and the pattern mentioned in the article is altered, or no longer recognizable? This seems like a really great attempt, but I think this is going to start causing problems with people who own the legit CD. Also, I would assume the check happens at startup, so I think something similar to a no-CD patch may still be a workaround, so maybe they are playing this up a little too much. I'm interested to see how this holds up.

So basically..

[OutRigged]

If one of my CD's becomes damaged, the game will start to screw up. If I try using a backup of said game CD to prevent this, the game still becomes screwed up.

Of course they're going to replace damaged CD's for free right?

Re:Pointless attempts?

[NanoGator]

"What's going to stop someone then cracking the main executable to bypass the degradation?"

Time. By the time they get all of it cracked, the game will have been on shelves a while.

Spyro the Dragon had protection sort of like this in the late 90's. If it detected one of the protection schemes was broken, it'd make something in the later level disappear. The cracker had to play through the entire game to check that the crack worked. They kept a fully cracked copy off the streets for roughly a month, after that, it wasn't so important that it be protected anymore.

What if it "believes" wrong?

[Andy Smith]

If you want to check my posting history then you'll see that I'm strongly anti-piracy and supportive of pretty much *anything* that copyright holders do to defend their livelihood.

But I disapprove of this technology.

What if it believes a genuine installation of the game is in fact a pirated copy? What if it then sets about slowly punishing the person who has done nothing worse than purchase a game?

This technology, a piece of software and therefore objective by definition, is attempting to make subjective, semi-human judgements. The only way such technology would be acceptable is if it was 100% reliable and fault proof.

Do you want them testing it on your system?

And you just *know* the next step will be punitive file deletions, hard drive formatting, etc.

Re:What if it "believes" wrong?

[lightspawn]

What if it believes a genuine installation of the game is in fact a pirated copy? What if it then sets about slowly punishing the person who has done nothing worse than purchase a game?

This is even worse because some gamers may not even realize what's happening.

"The game became really difficult after level 8, so I quit playing. I sold it back to ebgames at the mall for $12".

Of course, ebgames sell this to somebody else for $33. What's the game's next owner supposed to do? How can he even tell something's wrong when he's never even played the game the 'right' way?

This sux.

Read the article again...

[DoctorRad]

New scratches won't affect gameplay. The point is that the 'fake scratch data' won't be copied verbatim by disc copying software[1], so the code knows the disc is a copy.

Read errors caused by new scratches on an original disc will just get corrected as per normal. The 'fake' scratches will still be there, so the game will play fine.

Matt...

[1] Yet...
--
A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.

Is Fade Legal?

[LightForce3]

If memory (and legal knowledge) serves correctly, if I buy a piece of software (or, technically the disc and the right to use the software), I am legally entitled by US law to make a working backup of the software. It would seem that this anti-piracy technology interferes with this right.

Also, what happens if the original disc gets physically scratched so that the "fragments of 'subversive' code designed to seem like scratches" can't be read but the rest of the disc is fine?

As another poster stated, any company that uses Fade should offer free replacement discs to legitimate purchasers.

Re:Pointless attempts?

[Goldberg's Pants]

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.)