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The Problems With Game Copy Protection
Next Generation has a piece looking at the sometimes overly enthusiastic copy protection schemes used in PC games. From the article: "In the late '80s and early '90s, the games industry could do little more than ask nicely that you not pirate their wares. These days, however, copy-protection software is ubiquitous, and any PC game bought at retail is going to have it embedded on the game disc(s) in one form or another. I'm okay with that in theory, but some of these anti-piracy software programs are so potent that they cause issues for legitimate game buyers. One of the leading brands, StarForce, is notorious for not only making it difficult for a small percentage of legitimate users to load up StarForce-protected games, but also for leaving potentially problem-causing StarForce software behind on your PC, even after you've deleted the game it was protecting."
In the late '80s and early '90s, the games industry could do little more than ask nicely that you not pirate their wares.
... I remember years ago the copy protection was simply to enter "The 4th word on the tenth line on the 10th page of the instruction manual", etc.
It wasn't only "ask nicely"
It wasn't so successful, but... it was an interesting idea at the time. (Even if it was a pain having to dig out the manual if you haven't played a game in a while)
I completely forgot about that until reading this article. I'm not sure how many companies did it, but I remember this on some Sierra Online games I played (Police Quest, for one)
The best defense against this sort of this is the operating system. The ideal mechanism for software management is for the OS to only permit software to be installed in a specific directory tree, one per application, instead of allowing software to sprinkle DLLs all over the place. Installation should be a recorded transaction which can be replayed in reverse by the OS to verify that software has truly been removed. This, along with really good privilege separation, will ensure that rogue applications cannot evade detection and removal.
Too bad Linux doesn't do any of this...
- I wanted to call myself Anonymous Coward, but that name was already taken by somebody
Ahh, the 90s.
"Now geek, don't you copy this game!"
It's like saying...
"Now Homer, don't you eat this pie!"
Demented But Determined.
This reminds me of the good old days - the late 80's to early 90's, to be exact, when games came on floppy disks and companies like Psygnosis were well-known for the execution-protection, err, copy-protection on their games.
In fact, my friends and I had a saying - "Psygnosis - Latin for won't boot".
Good to see the youngsters will get to enjoy that experience. Of course, back in the day, when you were done playing the game you rebooted your computer and the system was back to normal - you didn't have the games leaving little turdlets behind like they do now.
Kids today. Always have to go us old farts one better.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Here's a pretty damn complete list of protections
t ections.shtml
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_pro
It includes how to detect the protection, how to back 'em up and usually a bit about how each one works
I remember that many years ago, I based my cd-burner purchasing decision on it's ability to rip/burn copy protected discs.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I flat refuse to install anything with StarForce on it. Google starforce and you'll see plenty of articles and rants about it.
.exe file at gamecopyworld. I'm sure I could find a copy of the whole game somewhere if I bothered to look. Not only did they lose a sale because of their anticopy software, it turns out the damned thing doesn't work anyway. Real good business decision there.
I have games that include SecureROM (GTA SA and VC) and SafeDisc (Sim City 3000) and I've never noticed them causing any problems or installing anything other than registry entries. StarForce, on the other hand, installs hidden device drivers, which totally fuck up a cd/dvd drive in some PCs. On some XP machines, it can cause actual physical damage to the burner. It also elevates access priviledges for user-level applications, although I can't imagine why the hell it does that.
Fuck all that. Not on my machine.
After seeing the commercials for Brothers in Arms, I decided to buy it. Then I noticed this disclaimer on the publisher's web site:
"NOTICE: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some DVD-RW, and virtual drives."
I looked around and discovered it was StarForce, so I just put my credit card back in my wallet. Then I sent an email to the publisher to tell them they'd just lost a sale.
Funny thing is, there are four different cracked copies of the game's
Only on
That most games are *easier* to pirate than buy legit. The *valid* reasons are actually pretty extensive. I've played demos. Liked them. Then I bought them only to find that it doesn't work on my computer, and there is no patch. (Gawd-dammit EA! I hate you fuckers!) To make matters worse, I can't return it (Even WAL-MART fears I might be a pirate, aaargh!) An AMD XP 2500+ with 512MB and an ATI 9600XT isn't a flame thrower, but it should run everything to some degree.
...No wonder consoles are "winning."
Also, I have kids. Young kids. And any gamer-parent knows that the first rule is to hide your CDs. I keep my originals SAFE. I MUST copy them onto the harddrive and use an image, or copy the disc. One minute alone with my computer is all it takes...
Requiring the CD also introduces unnecessary wear. DVDs are exponentially more vulnerable. I bought MGS2:Substance on DVD for PC, and the installer won't run due to a CRC error, le cry! I should be able to send my CD back for another - I can't exchange w/o the packaging - 3 years later.
To copy the original that I got from a store, I need a daemon tools and alcohol, so protections that require I not own those programs piss me off - at least put it on the damn box - It's my money and I deserve to know.
*or*
I could fire up bittorrent, download, install/patch, visit gamecopyworld, and start playing without having to go to the store, get bilked, figure out how to *keep* my game, and *then* play crappy FPS XXI (barring hardware issues and lack of patches.)
Shit, I've had freaking pop-cap games not work! Diner-Dash, crashes randomly - even after reinstalling windows. (Only thing left is to install new/more memory, and maybe a mobo replacement...) "Tech Support" doesn't exist, I get the middle finger for my $50.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From what I understand, Starforce actually converts the executable, or parts of it, to a bytecode format which is encrypted and only usable with Starforce installed and functional. The developer can choose how much or how little to protect, generally leaving the high performance areas unprotected and a few well chosen pieces heavily protected. This effectively means that one needs to reverse engineer the Starforce bytecode or acquire the source for the executable.
This is also why a popular method for defeating SF in the past was to use the demo binaries with the full version data, which has now led to demos being infected with this crap.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
I recently purchased Battlefield 2 from EA. After a Lengthy install, the game refused to run stating I had CDRom emulators on my system (I didn't). I verified in my device manager that there was a single CDRom and it was the physical one in the machine. I opened a support ticket with EA and got many canned answers that had nothing to do with my problems. When I finally got the attention of a tech there that had some insight, I was basically told I'm screwed. They didn't know why and weren't willing to refund my money. Compusa was also inwilling to provide a refund as the box had been opened. So I'm stuck with a $50 game I cannot run legitmately. I did however finally get it to run using pirate mechanisms.
Once again, this shows their copy protection only hurts those that buy the game.
I started with nothing and have most of it left.
I am a bit late in this thread, but I actually pirate software I have paid for.
That's right, I pay for a license, then download pirated copies. Why?
Because the copy protection schemes are so intrusive, I just cannot stand them. I do a majority of my 3d work ona laptop, and I don't have USB ports to spare for my 2+ dongles, much less want to run the risk of the dongles being stolen, OR should I mention the fact that the laptop won't even fit in the fucking case with the dongle on OR the fact that the sentinel driver software for the dongle is unstable and I don't want another 3rd party service running. Games too.. I grab a NO-CD crack for every game I own. All the data is on the HD, why should I have to have the damn disc in my cd drive constantly spinning up and spinning down eating my battery power? Not to mention that it *renders the optical drive useless*. It's so obnoxious.
Actually, the real problem is that these draconian copy protections make it easier for a pirate to play a game, than the person who actually made a purchase. Why buy a game and jump through 1000 hoops, when you can just get a pirated copy with all that garbage removed? It's as if they're encouraging piracy at this point...
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
This one's quite a bit more devious though than a silly little shareware game. There's many layers to it. When you first run the game executable, it checks to see if you have the starforce drivers installed. If not, it installs them and you have to reboot before the game will work.
Once the drivers are loaded, the game will start up and make numerous calls though them which includes a load of debug-hostile code (standard anti-debug checks plus things like using the single-step and breakpoint interrupts as part of their own code). They manually load portions of the ntdll code into memory and call those functions via their own routines rather than making standard system calls. Pretty much the entire cd-check process is not written in x86 assembly. It's a CPU emulator with a virtual CPU of their own design. Reads the pseudo-code and their interpreter translates it instruction by instruction. So you have to figure out their opcodes and any associated decryption that takes place inside their virtual machine. Once you pass all this, the game itself might have entire functions removed and replaced with their virtual machine code as well. These would have to be figured out and replaced with x86 instructions so that the code is not dependent on their VM to run.
In some cases, they also encrypt a number of the game resource files (audio, textures, etc) into one large file instead, then redirect game calls for these files into it like an ISO image. This is the starforce file system (in newer versions, the first four bytes of these files is "SFFS"). You'll have to decrypt and extract all of these files as well.
Plus there's all sorts of other nasty tricks to make performing the above steps even more difficult..
Despite all of this, games with this protection HAVE been cracked completely... It just takes a lot of time and dedication by people with the right knowledge and inclination to do so.
If it were as simple as you think, this protection would have been tossed aside long ago, like so many others.