Piracy & PC Games

[Jim]

This is a long article, but must reading for anyone interested in a very good analysis of this mine-laden topic.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

-Jim

[norb]

Screw it, we're moving to console!

[louie raider]

holy crap, i think i found my holiday reading material...

[JC Edwards]

Louie Raider wrote:

holy crap, i think i found my holiday reading material...

I knew you would find that new issue of "Today's Basement Nudist"!:P

[ironsight]

People who crack PC games or any other SW are low lifes IMO.
Having said that, some of the anti-piracy schemes have caused me great pain as i mentioned in another thread. Specifically, StarForce a Russian developed anti-piracy SW which runs whether the game is being played or not. It can cause optical drive problems and slows the PC down even when the game is not running.

There's got to be a more logical straight forward solution to anti-piracy than the elaborate SW schemes developers come up with. Such as a specially coded key in the form of a USB flash memory stick which communicates random generated cryptic code in conjunction with the game CD. The memory stick key would be epoxy encapsulated and could easily be made copy proof by external means. Unless the key's return information conforms with the random crypic CD information it expects, the game is useless. Also, during the registration process the key could also be downloaded with unique cryptic code. So it'll cost an extra buck or two, so what.
Maybe it could be made to work, maybe not, but something conclusive needs to be done as 'cracking' legitimate SW is a big deal.

[norb]

I'm looking seriously into the Steam stuff. They have their own method that seems pretty good. I guess the question is, has anyone heard of a cracked copy of Half-Life 2 that works.

[estabu2]

I used steam for Left 4 Dead and it works great. I know I have to connect to steam before I load the game up or it will connect me before it starts the game. Is there a way to make it so you don't have to connect in order to play the game? It also makes it easy to see who is playing what games.

Of course this would all be ironed out before hand, but I was just curious how they worked that.

[Anthropicus]

norb wrote:

I'm looking seriously into the Steam stuff. They have their own method that seems pretty good. I guess the question is, has anyone heard of a cracked copy of Half-Life 2 that works.

Steam does not actually do a thing to prevent piracy, despite its reputation. Well, it might delay it a bit - but every game that's been released on steam has had a steam-less pirated release and usually fairly soon. Now that said, Steam is a great service and I would love to see your game on it! It has the advantage of being more convenient than torrents and the like as a way to get your games online, so it does fight piracy in that way - by providing a better service.

Dongles, like ironsight mentioned, aren't much better, because then you inconvenience the actual users more than the pirates who will just crack the software anyway.

The way I see it is this:

1) Any software copy protection will be defeated, so
2) You may as well not screw over your legitimate customers.

This is how companies like Stardock survive without the DRM juju protecting their software.

As far as PC software goes, the only real way to prevent piracy is with online play. It works like this:

1) Provide a matchmaking server.
2) Authenticate CD-Keys over the net before you let people play.
3) Don't let multiple people use the same CD-Key at the same time.

Hmm, it seems to have inserted slashes each time I used '. Odd.

edit: Ah, it only does that in the preview window, the post came out fine.

[norb]

I don't see the point in just giving in to criminals. I do see a valid reason to try and prevent people from stealing. So I do plan on putting in some type of protection. Thanks though, I did not realize that Half-Life2 and other Valve titles had been hacked. I do not believe in using stuff like Securom that puts crap on your harddrive. I did that for the MMG release, not realizing what it actually did. I had asked about it and was assured that it did not do anything, so I guess that someone didn't understand the question.

I personally think that CD protection is a valid means, everyone has to put a disk in a console, so it's no different. But by only selling through CDs, you lose half the advantage of selling PC games, the ability to sell to the impulse buyer immediately.

Anyway, there will be something, not sure what yet.

[louie raider]

Spent about 8 hrs of driving time reading that article, what an enlightening read...

The author asserts that issuing a demo helps with piracy - i know you had released one for TC2M, Norb; would you consider doing that with our new game here?

also do you have any data on how TC2M has been doing with piracy? Perhaps if the numbers are encouraging, then taking whatever steps you did there and bringing them over to this new game might be possible.

I read the article's take on SecuRom and StarForce and it seems that a lot of their problems were misconceptions, which is too bad for them... but i don't know if handing over everything to Steam is the best idea either. like the article asks, what happens if their servers go down or they go broke?