The gaming world is in a good place.

Ubisoft will see what was and wasn't worth it (financially and from the "backlash") and will act or not act accordingly. It's not a big deal.

Frankly, I hope their sales increased, despite people bitching about minor inconveniences. I hope they're smiling that after a week's release, there's still no reliable crack out there. I'm sure more DRM like this is on its way. We'll see for sure in their next PC release.

If only we could hire these crackers to solve real-world technical problems.

These guys are reverse engineering a 6gb game in assembly...think of what they could do if they worked on a game engine.

Steam is an excellent implementation of a DRM system that I actually prefer to CDs which almost always get lost scratched over the years. And because they have that patch written in the case steam dies it's pretty hard to argue against their system.

Honestly I don't care if I have to be online to play a single player game, I would be upset if momentary internet connection loss caused me to lose progress however, and I would be upset if the servers shut down and no solution was offered. That said, I don't know that I trust ubisoft in regards to providing such a solution.

What I am against is stuff like that stupid spore license and rootkits.

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
If only we could hire these crackers to solve real-world technical problems.

These guys are reverse engineering a 6gb game in assembly...think of what they could do if they worked on a game engine.

Most of which is external assets, which would have nothing to do with how much they have to reverse engineer. Added in that there are many ways to narrow down what you are looking for, and the process becomes less impressive.

Quote: Original post by Talroth

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
If only we could hire these crackers to solve real-world technical problems.

These guys are reverse engineering a 6gb game in assembly...think of what they could do if they worked on a game engine.

Most of which is external assets, which would have nothing to do with how much they have to reverse engineer. Added in that there are many ways to narrow down what you are looking for, and the process becomes less impressive.

Looking through disassembly to throw in a few nops is quite a bit different then actually creating a game. Especially since you have cracked one game using a particular DRM scheme any other games using that DRM become quite a bit easier.

I haven't bought a PC game in a very long time. I haven't bought a console or console game in a long time.

All the money that might have gone to such things have moved on to bigger and better things, like VMWare Workstation 7. Workstation is far more complex (and thus likely has a larger code base) and more expensive (to purchase) than any game I know of, yet it doesn't require anything more than a short, simple key for the full version to be obtained from the "demo" version (free 30-day full-feature trial). It doesn't even do an online check (excepting that it may send key data along when it asks for updates from their server).

Workstation does have a website where you can enter your key, which does you the favor of remembering it for you indefinitely. When I first bought it, the program accepted my key but the website didn't. I entered a support ticket, and without making me wish I hadn't bought it (or any difficulty for me at all, for that matter), they fixed the problem, and the whole time I was able to use the software just fine even though their system was not flawless.

If only games would take after such kind software companies as VMWare, Microsoft, etc. Sure, include some basic DRM, but don't waste your time and money (and customers' time and money) on advanced DRM that starts out broken and goes downhill from there.

As far as traffic monitoring, it's trivial to raise your noise-to-signal ratio, and it's trivial to encrypt traffic such that only the other endpoint will know what you're doing (and using systems such as tor can prevent that other endpoint from knowing who you are). It might take ~40 hours of programming in python to make a sophisticated traffic generator and shaper that could easily hide the traffic they're trying to monitor.

Quote: Original post by Extrarius

If only games would take after such kind software companies as VMWare, Microsoft, etc.

These companies make their money via volume and other deals towards incorporated entities, primarily in markets with legal systems compatible with those of where the originating software licenses are registered.

In other words - they don't worry about piracy, since it doesn't affect them. In case of Microsoft, it indoctrinates generations via early and easy exposure to expensive software.

But! Earn a dime, and be a legal entity (Inc., SCorp, ...) and lawyers will come crashing down on you.

Why? Because one can only take money from those that have it. MS has long ago realized that while selling retail copies earns money, pirates wouldn't have paid for their copies anyway, yet they are still their users. When such users come to work, to school and similar - they will want same products, since that is what they know.

Games? No volume deals, no 3-year government plans, no lobbying, no vendor lock-in, no platform. No money.

It's similar to how freelancers get screwed out of money. Let's say company hires someone to do some work for $1500. Then the company doesn't pay. Freelancer might go to court, but the cost of court procedures alone would be $15,000, and large company can drag this out for months on corporate time and money - they have full time lawyers. So it's a no win situation. Small claims court might help, but in terms of time==money, even they might not be worth it.

Same for retail-only products. It is simply not financially viable to pursue individual offenders ($59,95), which is the case with enterprise software ($599,500).

It really isn't comparable, enterprise makes money in different ways, and adopting their ways doesn't work.

Also - keys and licensing for enterprise isn't really secure, nor does it need to be. That never was the point. Each product comes with EULA, and lawsuits could be filed even if keys weren't used. Keys serve primarily as identifiers for priority support, branding and volume distributions, as well as OEM branding and bulk licensing. The stuff with retail box is mostly about usage tracking, it's not realistically designed to stop piracy.

Quote: Original post by jtagge75

Quote: Original post by ChurchSkiz
If only we could hire these crackers to solve real-world technical problems.
These guys are reverse engineering a 6gb game in assembly...think of what they could do if they worked on a game engine.

Looking through disassembly to throw in a few nops is quite a bit different then actually creating a game. Especially since you have cracked one game using a particular DRM scheme any other games using that DRM become quite a bit easier.

Yeah I looked into how cracks worked back in school (some time in the Win98 era).
Just by following advice from forums about what different copy protection routines look like, I was able to disable a CD-check on a new game I'd gotten without even knowing X86 assembly (other than that j** instructions are probably branches, and nop can be used to "erase" instructions)!
Not saying it's easy, but once someone else has cracked a particular scheme, then even noobs can reproduce their cracking technique ;)

Quote: Original post by Antheus
It's similar to how freelancers get screwed out of money. Let's say company hires someone to do some work for $1500. Then the company doesn't pay. Freelancer might go to court, but the cost of court procedures alone would be $15,000, and large company can drag this out for months on corporate time and money - they have full time lawyers. So it's a no win situation. Small claims court might help, but in terms of time==money, even they might not be worth it.

This is why if you're ever doing software development you should incorporate a licensing module, and have your contract properly vetted by a lawyer beforehand. I've never lost a dime due to someone failing to pay me, and getting away with my software. I have lost money due to companies going UNDER though, however the software ceased functioning when they failed to pay for the license (which on my contracts is explicitly specified to be the last payment for the project... don't pay the full amount? Don't get the license, don't get the license and the software stops working after a short period of time).

Quote: Original post by nullsquared
Related:

QFT

When piracy gives you a better service than being a legitimate customer, there's a problem. Rather than fight with the consumer, they should be looking to work with us. Throwing up their hands in the air and saying 'we don't know what to do' is simply not a valid excuse.