Copy protection is fruitless..

There will always be someone smarter with more determination that will "crack" any protection created. protection schemes will continue to be created with more and more complexity, which inturn will be cracked... and so on.

How many man hours go into developing a modern protection system? only for the developers to realise that its been cracked even before they''ve had a chance to ship to most retail outlets, sometimes even before it ships. Its all a total waste of time and money.

Whats more is the inconvenience to the legal users of the software, personally i despise having to play "find the cd" every time i wish to play a game, thus all of my legally purchased games, that i play frequently, have all been cracked.

What comes after all the failed attemps? a protection system with a game built in?

Well thats my 2cents.. good work on the paper though.

One last thing.
Has there ever been a copy protection scheme that has never been "cracked"? (games only)


(all errors, typos, etc.. are left to the discretion of the reader to modify)

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Original post by billy_zelsnack
You can''t say that. They never had those customers. Instead they gained at least one customer because they pooled their money. I just did this same thing with a game the other day. It was not worth it for either me or my friend to buy this particular game, but after splitting the cost it was worth it. He had the game first, beat it and will never play it again. I''ll start playing the game soon. When I am done with it, we''ll sell it. That means at least 3 people, probably more will end up playing this game and the developer will only see the money for one.

What if a father buys a game for his 3 kids. Those 3 kids will play the game. Should the father have to pay 3 times as much? This also is a form of pooling.

It is just going to be a fact of life for developers of intangible goods. People are going to use your products without paying you. Tough.

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Assume there are ten people living in a incredibly small village. One is printing the village news. Then one villager buys a newspaper and after reading it give it to his/her friend. Whom in turn does the same and so on. Soon enough one third of the village have read the newspaper. This is a very small village indeed but my point is that just because you can give the newspaper away doesn''t make it right. There have been theft going on here. Theft of income because now the producer of the paper have less income due to loss of potential sales. No point in buying a paper you read is there? Theft of property. When you buy the paper you buy the right to read the content not to spread or give away (consult your lawyer if you are in doubt) So to answer your question. If all three kids need three copies, then yes! he does need to buy three copies. If they only have one computer there is little point in buying more than one copy since only one can be used at a time. You buy a license to play the game per machine, not per individual.

Hi Richard,

You state that price sensitivity is at the core of the piracy problem. However, your right-hand demand curve shows a lower price elasticity than the ''effective demand'' curve on the left. I would have expected that price-sensitive consumers would yield a flatter demand curve (i.e where a change in price yields a large swing in quantity ).

Maybe your demand curve has kinks in it instead of a slope change: something that should ressemble a quarter-circle (upper right quadrant). So that when the price increases, price sensitivity also increases. Converesely, the value bin is where price sensitivity is expected to be the lowest: it doesn''t matter anymore if the game is $1 or $3 as the perception of a ''cheap thrill'' is the same.

-cb

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Original post by Anonymous Poster One last thing.
Has there ever been a copy protection scheme that has never been "cracked"? (games only)

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Never heard of one. Probably the best concept is that of confussion. One dev released a game that only checked the cp occasionally and then degraded the gameplay over time - this meant people could play and enjoy the game but only for a limited time. Because it wasn''t always checked and didn''t result in an immediate termination of the game the hackers didn''t spot it. This meant initial pirate versions were not fully hacked and so didn''t work. The developer then added to the confussion by releasing their own "hacked" versions that also didn''t work properly. By in effect filling the market with false hacks they made it much harder for people to get a working hack.



Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions (www.obscure.co.uk)
Game Development & Design consultant

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Original post by superpig
That said, I think Starboy's hit on the critical point that I was trying to make: the way to do it is to stop seeking revenue through stuff which *can* be pirated (i.e. the software product) and start using stuff which *can't* (i.e. subscriptions, tech licensing, advertising).

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There are also game elements that can come from outside the sofware realm. I remember that StarCross had a metallic-like map that was used during the game, and this paper was next to impossible to photocopy. Early versions of Sphere's Falcon3 sim had paper maps that helped the player in quickly identifying the visual landmarks in the HUD with actual terrain topology so that missions that don't go according to plan could be modified on-the-spot easily (i.e. finding another ingress route to a highly defended target area). There was another game that had some map on a doubly-sided paper; flat on the table it would yield basic information but in front of a light the reverse side would add details to the map. Again, game elements that are not easily duplicated to the proper scale and format for optimal game play.

Just some random thoughts...

-cb

[edited by - cbenoi1 on April 13, 2004 12:42:40 PM]

MichaelT wrote:
You buy a license to play the game per machine, not per individual.

All right, now we''re getting somewhere.

I think you''ll agree that when I am done playing the game I can take it to EB and can legally sell it them. As long as I delete my copy all is good.

So more concisely written it should be.

You buy a license to play the game on one machine at a time.

Onto your small village argument. It is full within the original villager''s right to read the paper and then give his copy to another villager. If everyone in the town ends up reading a single copy and the newspaper business goes out of business for it. Tough. There is no such things as a right to profit.

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Original post by superpig
At the moment, I agree. Though the concept of creating a high-quality game and releasing it for free, using the other revenue streams I discussed to cover costs, would make for an interesting experiment, don''t you think?

(Of course, such an experiment is unlikely to happen, just like ''repealing all laws'' would be an interesting experiment, you wouldn''t actually *do* it).

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America''s Army.

A free, high-quality game. All the revenue coming from a form of product placement; the product being a job in the US military.

John B

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Original post by billy_zelsnack
MichaelT wrote:

I think you''ll agree that when I am done playing the game I can take it to EB and can legally sell it them. As long as I delete my copy all is good.

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Yes.

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You buy a license to play the game on one machine at a time.

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Actually this does not apply in all cases. Some licenses specifically state that the application cannot be *installed* more that one machine.

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Onto your small village argument. It is full within the original villager''s right to read the paper and then give his copy to another villager. If everyone in the town ends up reading a single copy and the newspaper business goes out of business for it. Tough. There is no such things as a right to profit.

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No there is not, and your point is correct. But fine, I''ll rephrase: The villager prints a *copy* and give it to his/her friend and so on...

Since a huge number of people playing CS(for example) are using an illegal copy (you can doubt me if you want) you''ll have to realize that those copies are *all* illegal. That loss of profit is indeed due to theft. Theft is illegal, correct?

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Original post by cbenoi1
You state that price sensitivity is at the core of the piracy problem. However, your right-hand demand curve shows a lower price elasticity than the ''effective demand'' curve on the left. I would have expected that price-sensitive consumers would yield a flatter demand curve (i.e where a change in price yields a large swing in quantity ).

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Fact is, the only consumers sensitive to the price are the ones who would actually buy it - i.e. the effective demand. The total demand curve should really be totally vertical - the price won''t affect the number of people who *want* the game, it''ll only affect the number of people who can buy it. The effective demand curve I agree should be elastic, but then, I never put a scale on that price axis, did I? Perhaps the diagram is showing changes in demand through a single dollar

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Maybe your demand curve has kinks in it instead of a slope change: something that should ressemble a quarter-circle (upper right quadrant). So that when the price increases, price sensitivity also increases. Converesely, the value bin is where price sensitivity is expected to be the lowest: it doesn''t matter anymore if the game is $1 or $3 as the perception of a ''cheap thrill'' is the same.

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That''s completely true; however, I believe my diagram already shows it. A straight-line demand curve has non-constant elasticity. It''s because it''s not just the gradient of the line - it''s the whole percentage thing; when the price is at $2 and you drop it to $1, that''s a 50% drop but you''d get a very small change in quantity demanded - say 5% increase. So, PEd there comes out at 5/-50 = -0.1, high inelastic. At the other end of things, a drop from $100 to $99 may double your consumers (from 1 to 2 ), so PEd = 200 / -1 = -200. Pretty highly elastic.

Of course, I''m not totally sure that elasticity and price sensitivity are quite the same thing.

With regards to the ''extra stuff in the box'' thing, being hard to photocopy and the like - you''re absolutely right. However, it''s getting increasingly difficult to do that - DVD case games seem to be the way of the future (and we may not like it, but it''s cheaper to produce and a more efficient use of shelf space for the retailers).

Introversion did something a bit like what you suggest with Uplink - a printed black-on-black code sheet that you had to use when starting a new game. I''m not sure what the cost of that would have been.

JohnBSmall: ah, of course... though America''s Army is a little special anyway, because it''s not being produced by a regular devco. Oh, if only the government would pay all of us to write games...

>MichaelT wrote:
>Since a huge number of people playing CS(for example) are using >an illegal copy (you can doubt me if you want) you''ll have to >realize that those copies are *all* illegal.

CS runs needs a server to run and uses a huge key-space. If there is piracy going on, then Valve is allowing it on purpose. At any point they can just revoke duplicate CD keys.

>That loss of profit is indeed due to theft. Theft is illegal, >correct?

Technically it is not theft. It is copyright infringement.

I''m not exactly sure what we are arguing about. I''ll just state my general stance. People are going to copy things no matter what. It is impossible to stop them. The best thing to do is to just make it less than trivial to copy your software to prevent the majority of casual copying. Any business revolves around the model that everyone must go out of their way to be honest and "do the right thing" then that business deserves to go down the toilet. People are just not like that. Throwing laws and lawyers at the problem is not the way to solve the problem, a new business plan is.