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Original post by LordKronos All you do by making an app well protected is to give them an excuse to hold a big "my schlong is bigger than yours" pissing contest.
Good point
''I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks...'' - TOOL [TheBlackJester]
"With my feet upon the ground I lose myself between the sounds and open wide to suck it in, I feel it move across my skin. I'm reaching up and reaching out. I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me, what ever will bewilder me. And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been. We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been." - Maynard James Keenan
Name: [email=darkswordtbj@hotmail.com]TheBlackJester[/email]Team: Wildfire Games
Projects O A.D.The Last Alliance
quote:
Original post by LordKronos All you do by making an app well protected is to give them an excuse to hold a big "my schlong is bigger than yours" pissing contest.
I disagree. By making it tough to crack, you buy yourself some time in which to rack up some decent sales. There was a good article several months ago in Game Developer magazine about a company that used some pretty innovative anti-cracking techniques in one of their games. Sure it got cracked after a month or two, but by then they had made a fortune off the people who didn''t have the patience to wait for the crack.
You are not the one beautiful and unique snowflake who, unlike the rest of us, doesn't have to go through the tedious and difficult process of science in order to establish the truth. You're as foolable as anyone else. And since you have taken no precautions to avoid fooling yourself, the self-evident fact that countless millions of humans before you have also fooled themselves leads me to the parsimonious belief that you have too.--Daniel Rutter
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Original post by nonnus29 Who so ever among you thinks Warez sites are easy to use and download off of are dead wrong. Between the popups, porno adds and incessant demand to "vote for my site!" I found it was impossible to get any software I wanted (at one time I was trying to get Visual Basic 6.0 Pro for free...)(Yeah, well I find it really hard to NOT love the idea of stealing from M$). Factor in 28.8 download speed and I found I could live without it!
nonnus29 is right these sites are extremely hard to get stuff off. Anyway I say we all just be little script kiddies and hack their servers and get rid of all the shit of them, so all script kiddies report here please...
I don''t agree with ''warez'' sites and the like, but there are perfectly legitimate uses for cracks. I backup every damned game I buy. I''ve had a couple of cds here and there fail on me for some reason or another. Without ''cracks'' I''d have to pay another 20 bucks(assuming a couple years after release) for the same damned product because to prevent piracy, developers are(most of the time) required to put in those crap ''safe''disc mechanisms that, obviously, don''t stop piracy or I''d be unable to download a crack.
"Who so ever among you thinks Warez sites are easy to use and download off of are dead wrong"
The warez community has moved on from ftp and http servers, and onto more exotic protocols, such as filetopia and hotline. Its not hard to get the software you want as its got an inbeded search facility that''ll locate any game/app/os u want!
One form of protection i''ve never seen broken is Microsoft''s digital signing system (for drivers)! This can also detect if the program that your running has been altered... Can''t this be incorperated into piracy protection?!
My experience with Microsoft''s activation system for WinXP has actually been quite good. But setting up a free-call telephone number in heaps of countries is something only a reasonably large corporation can afford to do.
I believe the best answer is still to EDUCATE people and appeal to their sense of responsibility. It won''t happen overnight, but a widespread advertising campaign would surely make a difference. I refuse to shoplift because I think it''s WRONG, not because I''m afraid of being caught. Similarly, people have to be convinced that pirating software is WRONG.
As a kid I got heaps of apps without paying for them. If someone asked me to buy my copy of Office I simply couldn''t have afforded it. I''m trying to say that part of the problem is that gaming is an expensive hobby. It''s like Lego. Costly, and more-ish.
Having just graduated and started work, I''m going through a process of looking at all the apps I have and purchasing them. When I suggested to one of my vegetarian Chomsky-reading colleague that I intended to purchase Office XP, he rebuked me for sending money to Bill Gates. But there''s more people who have to live off that money.
Positive encouragement to buy is good too, like access to more information from a website when you buy, or trying to put cool things in the box - felt maps, collectable stickers, a glossy comic book.
The anonymous poster is right. I had a cracked copy of Starcraft and Diablo II for a long while. Recently I realized that (1) Starcraft Battle Chest was dirt cheap ($7) the day after Thanksgiving at Best Buy''s sale and Diablo II Battle Chest was also about $10 cheaper where I bought it and (2) being able to play on Battle.net is much better than trying to find friends always willing to play when you do.
Having my own legit copy is great. Recently I found Quake III Arena for Linux at $10!!! That''s $20-$30 cheaper than it is for Windows right now, and guess what! It''s compatible with Windows! So now I have a legit CD key for Quake III as well!
I bought Black & White when it came out because I found a store selling it for $40 instead of $50. I still like the game, even with its issues, so the fact that it is cheaper was a great incentive to buy.
Incentives to buy apparantly are the main reason to buy. My incentives include supporting those companies and individuals who make great games. While most regular users might not care about that specifically, the ability to play online with others or to get special books/comics/discounts/etc from the company would be great. Imagine how much more money Blizzard would get from people who buy Starcraft and receive a $5-$15 discount on Warcraft III when it comes out! Or when buying Warcraft III, you get a $5-$15 coupon on Starcraft II! I think that kind of an incentive would be good. Computer gaming is an expensive hobby, and if a game company can make it cheaper to become a repeat buyer from them, I think they can be quite successful. I have always liked Blizzard since playing Clayfighter on the SNES. They have quite a few well done games for SNES like Blackthorne that I didn''t know about when it was being sold in stores. I now have a ROM of the game since I can''t get it anywhere else. If I could buy it now, I wouldn''t mind paying $5-$15 for the game, since it is on older generation hardware. Now imagine if, after buying Warcraft III within 3 months after launch, they offer those that register with them access to amazing discounts on older software, such as Blackthorne and Clayfighter and even Starcraft and Warcraft II? Imagine the revenues they would get on software that they just can''t sell in the first place. Not only would more people buy WCIII, but those same people would also have a great incentive to buy WCII and SC and whatever else Blizzard has! Of course, this post was originally about shutting down warez sites. I would rather not see them shut down as some cracks actually help legitimate customers, such as me when trying to install some games on my laptop. Without a CD-ROM, I can''t play a good deal of games unless I can crack them to play entirely from the hard drive. I think piracy concerns should deal with software quality. Really good games sell well. If you can sell your game to get a nice return on investment, the number of people who don''t pirate from you might not change, but the number of legit customers will nicely offset that. Setting up complicated anti-copy mechanisms might also help increase the number of legit customers at launch as mentioned before. Of course, then you are also hindering a customer''s ability to make a backup or any other otherwise legitimate use of cracks. Microsoft makes money from their Windows product line regardless if people make copies of their software. Until XP, I don''t think that the CD-ROMs were hard to make copies of. Maybe XP also has little if any copy protection in the CDROM itself. They make money because they can offer nice incentives for people who do buy their software, especially to OEMs and businesses. Great support, discounts, the ability to claim that a computer seller bundles Windows with every computer purchase (since most people want computers with Windows already on it), etc. I won''t get into how legal it is, but has the fact that illegal copies of Windows are easily distributable hurt their profits much? Would getting rid of those illegal copies actually increase profits? A very successful part of marketing is the following:
If my friend likes and uses Product X, I will also use Product X. If I like it, I will tell my friend about Product X.
Now for every copy of Windows out there, there is a number of people who swear by it. My friend has an illegal copy of Windows XP, and he loves it. I don''t like the activation secure thingie since that is way to much trouble to get an OS that works, so I won''t use it, but how many people has he converted to Windows users just by saying how great the product is? How many of his friends will buy a computer in the future with Windows XP (or the next version of Windows even) already installed? I guess I am now saying that piracy might be a good thing in terms of marketing. To be honest, if I didn''t have an illegal copy of Starcraft or Diablo II, I don''t think I would have the legal copies now. Of course, I got the games in the beginning because friends of mine said they liked the game and I wanted to play with them. Being able to play on Battle.net with complete strangers (some of whom just might become my friend) is also a great incentive to buy. I am now a legitimate customer of Blizzard, all starting because my friends had pirated copies of Blizzard products.
On the other hand, I have no real incentive to get a legal copy of single player games, like American McGee''s Alice (I do have a legal copy of it but that was because it was under $20 when I found it at the store...which might have been my incentive to get it) or Max Payne. I had an legal copy of Max Payne once, but I never installed it since I actually felt guilty and wanted to buy it to support the developers. Of course, my friend who I got it from doesn''t mind pirating it, and perhaps the fact that it was $50+ at the time was reason enough. I recently bought Wizardry 8 because I found a website selling it for $10 less than EB was. If you can''t tell, I like getting good software discounted. I also don''t mind buying older good software. Right now I am contemplating getting Age of Empires II for $30. Again, the only reason I would even think about it is because of my friends and the fact that they gave me an illegal version of the game. I don''t have it installed now, but I want to be legit as much as possible and so I want to get it. If the price was still $50 or so, I wouldn''t even think about it.
Again, I might have some flaws in this argument, but I am inviting any of you to point them out and we can come to some kind of resolution.
Thank you for actually going through and reading this, or even skimming this. I tend to get my ideas convoluted in my words when posting here, so thanks for getting this far. B-)
------------------------- (Gorgeous graphics)+(beautiful sound effects)+(symphonic music)+(no gameplay) != Good game
-------------------------GBGames' Blog: An Indie Game Developer's Somewhat Interesting ThoughtsStaff Reviewer for Game Tunnel
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Original post by bangz One form of protection i''ve never seen broken is Microsoft''s digital signing system (for drivers)! This can also detect if the program that your running has been altered... Can''t this be incorperated into piracy protection?!
bangz.
NO! This technology can never be integrated into any form of copy protection, and I''ll tell you why. All the digital signature does is tell the software the performs the check whether or not the file has been altered. With a digital signature, you take every byte of the source file, run it through a one way hash to compute a message digest, which you then encrypt with the private key of a public-private key cryptographic algorithm, and append the encrypted message digest to the file. Anyone can then take the original file, calculate the message digest, decrypt the encypted message digest that was appended to the file using the public key from the person they believe the file to be from, and compare the computed and the decrypted message digests to each other. If they match, then you can verify that the file is from the person you believe it to be from, and that it was in no way tampered with before it got to you.
The problem with applying this as a form of copy protection is that in order for it to work, you (the person trying to protect your copyrights) have to trust the code that does the verification, which cant be done with client base software. You can make the executable file check the signature and terminate if it doesnt match, but then a hacker will just disable this code and be on their way. You can make it so that the client program has to send the digital signature to the server and the server has to verify it, but then the cracker will just modify to code so that it always tells the server what it wants to hear (or if its a purely client based game, the cracker just makes it so it never even connects to the server).
For client-server based game, about the closest you can come is to have the server download a piece of executable code to the client which the client will then run. When run, this program will verify the integrety of the application and send its own response back to the server telling it to accept or reject the client. In order to keep someone from cracking this downloadable executable package, you can make it so that each day a new downloadable is distributed and make each downloadable change enough so that someone cant just make an automatic cracker for it. The problem here is, all someone needs to do is crack the original program so that it downloads the executable, fires it up in the context of the actual uncracked exe, monitors its progress (using some type of debugger or virtual machine, for example) and intercepts the communication with the server, then uses whatever type of key the server sends back. In such a scenario, the downloaded executable will see exactly what it expects to see (an uncracked executable) but little does it know its running in a tampered environment.
Trust me, digital signatures will NOT help with copy protection unless you can somehow guarantee the authenticity of the code performing the check, which you can NOT do in a distributed manner.
Ron FrazierKronos Softwarewww.kronos-software.comMiko & Molly - Taking Puzzle Games to A Whole New Dimension
