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Inside The Game Copy Protection Racket
simoniker writes "German game company and Accordion Hero creator Schadenfreude Interactive have been carefully considering what copy protection to use for their next game, and have documented their process in detail in a new Gamasutra article. After rejecting scratch and sniff cards, dongles, and musclebound Russian copy protection outfit NovaHammer ('You would not want any of your computer games to get hurt, would you?'), they come to the (fictional but agreeable!) conclusion: 'We decided against using any sort of copy protection on our games. After all, you shouldn't feel you are being forced to buy our games. You should want to. And if you do not want to, that is really our failure — not yours.'"
I remember losing my Prince of Persia manual and having to guess the first letter of the last word on page 30. That was annoying enough. But it's perhaps frightening commentary on the current state of DRM that I can't tell if the scratch and sniff card is or ever was real. Honestly. Was it? I can actually see a proprietary happy company like Sony coming up with something like that...
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
While the gamer in me rejoices when reading this, the practicality of things are such that copy protection is needed. I agree all attempts to thwart the pirating of games never succeed 100%. But what about the vast majority of people that don't know the intricacies of bitsettings and book types and after toasting a few CDs they give up. Sure, they can get a torrent of the packaged release that circumvents these measures.
/some/ piracy will result in more money in their pockets.
But in the end stopping
How many more roubles would they get if just 1% of people intending to pirate the game bought it instead?
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This writing may not necessarily reflect my thoughts and beliefs -- but it probably does.
Nope, but restricted online play has helped a LOT. There are many games that have been bought not out of the goodness of a gamers heart, but for the right to play on official server. :)
:)
Otherwise no... People with money to burn will continue to buy games, people without will continue to pirate. People with money to burn that pirate for anything other than a trial deserve a special place in hell
a joke going right over your head. How can you take seriously an article supposedly on copy protection when it's about the designer of mockeries of real games? The site is a (good) joke, but no comments should be posted with serious thoughts on the ins and outs of copy protection. Enjoy the funny and propose something more interesting than the scratch-n-sniff dongle. The Fast and the Furriest: Drunken Swerve with a breathalysing dongle could prevent copying and unlock new swerve powers and furries for each increase of 0.01% alcohol by volume. Drink up!
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Games companies need to stop being so reasonable, I'm going to go broke!
Heh. Silly me. I was really expecting an account of the state-of-the-art of copyright protection schemes. Y'know, Valve's details, current other mechanisms, etc.
TFA instead gives a belly-laugh of some strange russian software copyright company. Pardon the ignorance here.
I guess if I wanted to get a real summary, we go yet again to the Grouptionary.
To make sure you'll sell your game, just make sure that the official game packaging is so INCREDIBLE AMAZING AND COOL that the gamer will miss having the experience of owning it. Include a fantastic shining printed manual in full color with high-quality paper (a detailed manual, by the way), a CD whose cover has bright 3D effects, a futuristic or medievalistic box, one or more game character miniatures, coupons with codes allowing a gamer to obtain things he would love (such as game magazine subscriptions, calendars, official strategy guide etc.) at noticeable discounts as well as coupons to access ultra cool sections of the official website, such as, let's say, one where the buyer would be able to register his name and have the chance to win a trip to know the game developers with everything paid, and so on and so forth.
In short, add value to your official package by offering things a pirate would never be able to provide and people will simply prefer buying from you.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Funniest damn article I've read in a long time - seriously get to page 3 it gets good.
The guy has a great point - I've bought a lot of games in recent times, sometimes long time after they were released so that the price goes down (Valve episode 1 price down you bastards - its been out long enough) and they are games I'm rather devoted to. Half-life anything, Jedi Knight and Dark Forces, Quake, C&C, AoE, Duke, Legacy of Kain, Mechwarriors, Wing Commander anything (I want more of the last three and I still hold out hope for DNF!)... its a long list. I'll probably cae on Galactic Civilizations 2 in a bit because I've been told its the games Masters 3 ought to have been.
There are games I've pirated and deleted, the latest being Prey. Meh. Make your game worthwhile to me and I will buy a copy. I remember when I was in the midst of LoK each game cost more than the last and I still bought them - fricking Defiance was 50 bucks when it came out. It was worth it and I wanted it. The prices have gone up a fair bit so I'm not surprised that piracy has. Especially when a large chunk of your target audience is under 25s and a lot of that is still in school and college earning 6.25 an hour.
The cd protection is just annoying - fricking cd-keys are such a pain to keep and I hate that I cant legally back up so many of my cds now. I tried reinstalling Diablo last year and was heart broken when the disc had a CRC error all of sudden. I bought the damn game and now I can't play it because some money grubbing bastards at Blizzard were more bothered about their profits than my fair use. Bought it used again but I really ought not to have had to. If they have to have copy protection it'd be nice if game companies just made their games FOSS after a few years because they aren't going to sell it anymore really. Abandonware is a great idea guys!
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
The practicality of things is that most copy protection schemes inconvenience legitimate users.
I hate having to find/switch CDs. I really hate programs which prevent me from even running off of virtual drives so I can image the CDs rather than having to listen to my buzzing CD drive all the time, and I can't stand programs that will not let me legitimately run the game with a legitimate CD in the drive if I have virtual drive software installed on my machine.
And when I find a form of copy-protection annoying enough, I no longer purchase games which use that method, because it's less effort to warez it than it is to fiddle around with my system to get the copy-protection working.
So, game publishers: Get with the program. If you release good games which don't inconvenience the user, I'm a potential buyer. Otherwise, the best you can hope for is that I'll check it out with warez and buy the sequel if you've learned your lesson.
Today's object example:
Battlefield 2: Copy-protected to some degree, but mainly relying on individual CDkeys to encourage players to purchase for online play, doesn't hassle me about running it off an image, and since I've got my CD key stored securely and everyone I know has the game, I don't have to worry about losing my disks. Excellent game. Total sales to me: $50 + $30 expansion pack.
Silent Hunter III: Copy-protected with StarForce, known for being nasty and occasionally *damaging DVD drives*. Since they still haven't released an official no-starforce patch for SH3, the only way of getting rid of the Starforce crap is warezing it, so total sales to me = $0. Great game though,and SH4 won't be using StarForce so I'll definitely pick that up when it comes out.
Galactic Civilizations II: No copy-protection, legitimate purchase provides the option of free access through an online account for new patches/content, no hassle, ongoing support. Total sales to me = $50.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Right now, NWN 1 has piracy protection done right. After patch 1.66, NWN doesn't need the CD. However if you want to play multiplayer online (and possibly automatic update, not sure), you need to have a valid CD key stored on Bioware/Gamespy's servers. Pirated CD key? It gets disabled in their database. Keygens? Yes, they fool the client, but because Bioware's servers have a list of genuine keys, it won't get far when going online.
This is enough protection to keep 95% of the people from pirating the game. The last 5% will end up finding a crack from somewhere and bypassing it, even if it entails yanking hardware cables to disable physical drives.
Thumbs up, Bioware.
No other industry gets away with selling broken products, so why the fuck should the software industry? Treat them like they treat us. We're all thieves in their eyes. If we weren't, shit like Starforce would never exist. Pirate away folks!
Copy protection is why I've largely stopped bothering with the PC gaming industry. Neverwinter Nights was the worst. There was a two month period where, thanks to Securom, I couldn't run the game. Then there's Warcraft 3. I had to use a no-cd crack as the protection wouldn't work on my drive... But there's a CRC check when you log on to Battle Net, which meant I could no longer play the game I paid for online. (Same with Nascar Racing 2003.)
Starforce was the straw that broke the camels back. I installed a demo, and Starforce was installed. (Before someone starts yelling "Idiot, why would it be on a demo?" as has happened before on here, they put it on the demo as well so crackers can't use the demo executable to help them figure out how to get around it.) What followed was 18 months of being unable to read CD's I burnt after that shit was installed on my system. (CD's that worked just fine in every other system.) I eventually found a fix (Use the Starforce removal tools then go into the device manager and choose UNINSTALL for all IDE drives on your system, then reboot).
I bought Galactic Civilizations purely because Stardock treat their customers decently, and not like thieves. I'm happy to support a developer who has a clue. As for companies like Ubisoft and Codemasters who, when people complain about Starforce, call them pirates and hackers... Fuck them. All companies that use damaging and invasive copy protection deserve to go bankrupt. All they need to do is fire up Emule or a Torrent site and find out just how great the protection they're choosing use is. (Toca Race Driver 3, which used Starforce, was cracked and on the net before it was even released.) They're screwing the genuine consumer and, in some cases, causing damage to these peoples systems.
They're just as immoral as the pirates.
Reminds me of the dongle protection used in Robocop 3 on the Amiga. The head of the company proclaimed that the title would be impossible to pirate. (You can read all about it in an issue of the Amiga diskmag "Grapevine". Somewhere between issue 8 and 17. Sorry, can't be more accurate than that... I know I read it recently.)
The game called the dongle regularly. It wasn't a protection laid on top, it was woven into the game code. The head guy was saying how damn hard it'd be to crack, and while it may be cracked, it'd take months. You couldn't just remove the calls to the routine to bypass as it was all part of the game itself...
The game was cracked within days. Rather than strip out the checks, they managed to hack the routine it called so it basically said "The dongle isn't there, but don't worry, just keep running" and that was it... The game was cracked, and yet another failed protection bit the dust.
And yet the industry appears to have learned nothing. They always say about preventing "casual copying". Does anyone even do that anymore? With broadband and torrents etc... There's not even a need to copy an actual disk anymore. The copies flooding the net show protection does absolutely nothing to stem the flow of warez, so why in the hell do they still bother? I firmly believe that if a game is good, it'll sell. Protection or no protection.