Copy protection's has been the annoying thorn in my side since well.. forever. I can understand keeping your game away from pirates, but why torture the people who actually buy the game?! Worst thing of all is this Starforce crap, which made me format my computer after I tried to run POP:T2T.
Copy protection has NEVER helped. Back in the old days, people could just photocopy the manual (and disk) to get past it. Back when you couldn't copy cds anymore, pirated games could still run on patches and cracks (sometimes making it run better than the original). A few years ago, technology was so far ahead of copy protection that you could make your own CD-keys and stuff. Heck, you could do the same with this new Starforce crap. It's not hindering them pirates the least bit! It's only making the pirated games play better than the original, which is why I started not to buy original games ever since cracks were popularized.
Don't get me wrong, I don't support pirates. I own original versions of VTM: Redemption & Bloodlines, MMF, Mafia, Fallout Tactics, Baldur's Gate, King's Quest IV & VI, and a bunch of old, old games - all worth the money (cept for that gangster game I bought a few years back). However, I'm strongly people who try to increase their income by lowering the quality of their stuff AND damaging people's computers. BOYCOTT STARFORCE!! http://www.glop.org/starforce/
There are perfectly good games out there that have sold in masses without copy protection. I think Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics, Simcity 2000, all those games in that era went with barely any copy protection at all (and if they did, those were unnoticable and didn't damage anything).
However... there is one good concept of copy protection - making the players pay for unlocking the full powers of the game. Clickteam & Maxis does it well by making people enter their CD-Key when downloading new content. NWN, Empire Earth, those battle.net games are all great in the sense that you have to own the original to play online (the best part of playing the game). That I respect.
Anyway, just annoyed that I lost everything on my comp if I backed up all the important stuff. I should make a blog for these rantings .
BTW, all that crap about PC games not selling as good as console games because of piracy is false. Console games are much more easily pirated as people just mod the console to skip copy protection and that's why pirated console games in Malaysia costs less than $1 per game.
Edited by the Author.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
DaVince This fool just HAD to have a custom rating
Registered 04/09/2004
Points 7998
9th January, 2006 at 18:00:23 -
Copy protection that fucks up your computer is no copy protection... I'd suggest you demand some kind of payback, since this was probably done INTENTIONALLY.
I thought King's Quest VI's copy protection was rather clever (throughout a large portion of the game you have to use passages from the manual to help you solve logic puzzles). No matter how sophisticated copy protection is, though, there's always going to be some way past it eventually.
What exactly did the POP copy protection do to your computer?
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
9th January, 2006 at 21:40:56 -
Hehe, I took great satisfaction in getting past Starforce to play a copy of the King Kong game. All you have to do is disable the IDE channels on your computer... it can screw up, and granted it's not the easiest solution, but just proves the point that copy protection will always be useless when faced by the determined pirate.
Assault Andy Administrator
I make other people create vaporware
Registered 29/07/2002
Points 5686
9th January, 2006 at 22:35:42 -
There's only so far you can protect your application. If I release shareware I'll have a downloadable shareware version, and then another version which you get a download link to when you buy the game which also requires cd activation.
Now the simple way to get past this, would be to distribute the full version game on a file sharing program or on a website along with a cd key. And my method against this would be, to spam limewire with the shareware version only of my game, or shock styled programs, disguised as keygens, that scream really loud when the user opens them. Not that effective, but I'm sure it will stop a few people.
However, fortunately Clickteam games are very secure in the first place. Say you create an application with an edit box, and you had the condition: Editbox = password, display text "Password accepted". You would not be able to crack this application by disassembling it and hexediting the jumps. Go try it if you want. However this would only stop a basic cracker. A more advanced cracker would be able to use a program like softice to view the code at runtime, and crack it.
As for those games where you must connect to a server to validate you everytime you play, they're also useless. As a server can be easily emulated, and then the company who made the game is just driving up costs by having to have a server running 24/7.
I think that the best method of piracy protection is the ability to play games online, it can also be the number one reason why your game is fun. Even though you can buy pirated games in Malaysia for $1 (is that ringet by the way?) you will not be able to play those games online. Some people would say "Use Xlink Kai, or Xbox Connect!" These programs use system link in games over the internet, so you can play your games over the internet, but not across the xbox live service. Sure that's... okay, but it's noway near as good as the proper online service. The live service comes with, leaderboards, matchmaking, download content, friendslist, Better written network code which is specifically designed for internetplay as opposed to code designed for a LAN, and much more.
The same thing applys to countless other games, like Starcraft, and Counterstrike. You need valid Cdkeys to play online. I haven't heard of Starcraft's servers ever being cracked. Steam's system has been comprimised, allowing users to play all of steam games by simply running a program. However for that to work you still needed a valid cdkey of at least one steam game. Steam usually patches these hacks very quickly. So what I'm saying is, I think an online play option in your game will keep users paying for it. Even if they have a pirated version, they may really want online play, in which case they will pay for it (it happens).
Ps. Muz - Mail me some xbox games, you're my new contact in Malay.
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
10th January, 2006 at 03:16:36 -
It's true. Online play with CD keys is a true reason to buy the real game. Steam is a good example of sucessful anti-piracy... and it lets you download your game files onto any computer you install it on. And play the games without the CD. Funny how things work out.
I kinda expected this thread to be locked by now, specially when I saw that the last post was by PN .
Malaysian pirated goods cost RM3 (about $0.75) per CD at the very cheapest, very poor quality ones. The higher quality ones cost about RM8 (about $2) per CD, but sometimes they exceed the quality of the original. At prices like that, only idiots like my buy original software. Piracy here is so bad that the government actually puts those "tulen (original)" stickers on original CDs . Seriously. At
The POP copy protection messed up my CD, which I tried to fix by installing, re-installing a few drivers, which led to some message telling me that Windows won't start . Only way to fix that was to reformat everything. XP's copy protection is crap too, despite all that hype early on about having to call them for the serial number. But I've got a few original copies of WinXP lying around which came with the computers, FYI. Too lazy to return the damn game just yet, especially since I wanna see how the trilogy ends. I'm hoping it'll work, but can't be bothered to try. Dammit, why does SF take so F*CKING long to load?
BTW, people have played pirated versions of Counterstrike online. But I played them at a cyber cafe, so I'm not responsible .
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
I was thinking about trying to get past the Starforce on Worms4, but I've heard to many stories of it screwing up your computer so I most likely Won't.
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Edited by the Author.
. Only way to fix that was to reformat everything. XP's copy protection is crap too, despite all that hype early on about having to call them for the serial number. But I've got a few original copies of WinXP lying around which came with the computers, FYI. Too lazy to return the damn game just yet, especially since I wanna see how the trilogy ends. I'm hoping it'll work, but can't be bothered to try. Dammit, why does SF take so F*CKING long to load?
