Hi gamedevelopers. I ask you, What methods do you have to prevent Game Cracking and piracy for PC games? I think that CD and SerialKey method are outdated, and every knows how to burn a cd. Also, it's difficult to force users to buy legal copies or their games when they can get them free from Internet. There is no law that protect games in people homes. Every can play warez games without risks safely in their rooms. I've seen that the same thing happens in consoles. Have you ever heard about how to jumping an Xbox for pass the copyright protection?

there are always risks, and occasionaly people do get busted, and the fines are quite large. and its likely to end up similar to the MP3 scene in the very near future. but what alot of developers have been finding is to do something that the user cannot "hack" and that would be sell a service rather then a product. This is simple to do with online titles, as you can check a serial number (generated off of the computers hardware itself) and require that in order to play online, etc.

Humm. That's right.
So in this age, every game must become Online for survive. We have to offer a service as well, rather than a game product. That sounds reasonable.

But I can't believe that games like Half-Life2,Unreal and Doom3 still apply their outdated methods for control the piracy, just in this time. I meet with many smily people that play warez versions of these games without any impudence. Usually they say that 'is stupid pay $30 for a game that you can finish in less than a week, what a fake' - that happens with Doom3.

You've talk about risk. Then the risk is higher when you get 95% of the potencial users play a cracked version of your game.

Offering a gaming service is probably the best way to protect a game, but it'll only work for multiplayer-heavy games released by very large publishers.

Single player games are stuck with traditional serial/number approach plus the available anti-cracking tools, like encriptions, hasing, SafeDisk and etc.

The best way to learn how to protect games from being cracked is to learn how to crack them.

I saw this idea somewhere on the GD forums, I think in the Lounge:

Seed the warez sites and maybe even the P2P networks. Basically you create a bunch of different non-working cracks (for the Serial Key type) and distribute them to major warez sites.

If there is no law that protect games then game developers can not protect their games becouse exists a thousands of ways to get full versions of these games.
If such people can't find game at warez sites they don't play it. There is not way to protect games if is no law that protect games.

I think if Microsoft were to released a DRM (Digital Rights Management) operating system,
I think that would solve a lot of problems. I definitely would jump on the bandwagon and
start writing software for it if there was such a things as a secure OS, and I'm sure a lot
of software developers would too. Might have to wait until 2006.

Digital Rights Management operating system expansion take a lot of time.
DRM encounter resistance of pirates, crackers and "warez people".

Quote: Original post by cutthepeace
I saw this idea somewhere on the GD forums, I think in the Lounge:

Seed the warez sites and maybe even the P2P networks. Basically you create a bunch of different non-working cracks (for the Serial Key type) and distribute them to major warez sites.

I like that idea!

Best advice for here and now is that crackers can't crack what they don't have. Think about it.