DRMs - This is how it should be done!


Recommended Posts

DRMs, what are there aim? To stop piracy. Bear in mind, crackers are extremely skilled people, and there are only a small handful of games which haven't been cracked to allow for things such as no-cd .exe's and the like. General gamers dislike DRM, simply because it puts limits on the average user, the ones who buy the game - Ubisoft latest suicide attempt game in the form of a DRM which requires you to be online when playing, okay, well, lets face it - Pirates will sooner or later recieve a patch to circumvent this idiotic move on Ubisofts part.

But meanwhile the legal users are forced to be online, people with dial-up, and people living in a rural area (myself included) and those people who dont need the internet, are the ones who are affected by this. The pirates will beable to play offline using a patch and the legal users will be stuck.

So what will happen? You can be sure that alot of the legal users having the issues will search for a patch, it will be found and guess what - more people will go to pirating games. Not because they cannot afford the games, but because the game developers are putting annoying stuff into the game which ruins it, not the game itself but the DRM - designed to stop pirating but instead shoots itself in the foot by not thinking about a important part of its audience.

Anyway, DRMs should be different, and heres how -

If your going to provide DRM, make it minimal for the legal user, but harder for the pirated user - keep it in the background, have your usual stuff, such as a CD-Key, prehaps a order key as well for example.

Provide various enhancements, in-game and out-game for the legal users, for example - have a game account, which then provides several bonuses, but has a single cd-key attached to that account, game saves could be synced to this account, it could add new ways to improve online gameplay and it could progress to the extent where piracy goes down because of the benifits.

Basically the advantages have to be so good, that the disadvantages should appear to be worth it. Making life harder for the hacker, but easier for the legal user isnt a incredibly hard thing to do, just keep it in the background.

Just my 2 cents,

- Cameron.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As long as piracy is a problem, developers will try new ways to combat it.

We've been hearing about the shift towards MMO style authenticated access for some time. Now it's finally happening and some people are understandably upset, but they'll get over it.

The games may be cracked in time, but you're assuming all the data will be on the disc. It's no longer a safe assumption.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bring back the days of instruction manuals with puzzles to work out the code that changes everytime you start the game haha :laugh:

Hah! Those were the days - I recall Jungle Strike on a floppy disk coming with some kind of "Code Wheel" that would give you a certain number when aligned with the details given to you on the screen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In response to the OP, using cracks with your non-pirated games does not make you a pirate. It just means you're fed up with the bull**** or you're simply protecting your overpriced media.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bring back the days of instruction manuals with puzzles to work out the code that changes everytime you start the game haha :laugh:

Agreed! Worms for the Amiga was like this and several other Amiga games i played. was really annoying when you lost the manual.

hehe "Page 34, paragraph 2, word 16"

Hell! thats how Captcha should work also :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed! Worms for the Amiga was like this and several other Amiga games i played. was really annoying when you lost the manual.

hehe "Page 34, paragraph 2, word 16"

Hell! thats how Captcha should work also :D

Day of the Tentacle DRM ftw.

Which chemicals went into the time machine and where did the croutons go on the electrical device.. :rofl: :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed! Worms for the Amiga was like this and several other Amiga games i played. was really annoying when you lost the manual.

hehe "Page 34, paragraph 2, word 16"

Hell! thats how Captcha should work also :D

Still though,if i understood correctly,couldnt someone just scan and upload the manual of the game along with the iso?

I mean if hypothetically this method was adopted nowdays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a very old game that has circumvented piracy very easily. Diablo II. The game has a very inclusive single player, but a desirable multiplayer. And you need a valid cd-key to access battle.net, I mean Blizzard had it right from the beginning. No DRM and extra gameplay. I mean, once you have the engine in place, it's not very hard to include a multiplayer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's best just to include add-ons and features that are very hard to get without a legit key. Tempt people to buy the game. Trying to force them to doesn't work at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a very old game that has circumvented piracy very easily. Diablo II. The game has a very inclusive single player, but a desirable multiplayer. And you need a valid cd-key to access battle.net, I mean Blizzard had it right from the beginning. No DRM and extra gameplay. I mean, once you have the engine in place, it's not very hard to include a multiplayer.

I do not think Diablo II has circumvented piracy at all as there are 3 year old active torrents with over 700 seeds. And that is for Diablo II and the expantion. The fact is that people that pirate know that you can't play multiplayer.

Leaving content out and making the user pay for the content does not work ether as Dragon's Age and Mass Effect 2 have shown since all the content is available and cracked. Going back to old school and requiring the manual for authentication would just mean more pirated games would come withe the manual in PDF and a lot of them already do.

Forcing an online update as part of the the install does not work ether as Bio Shock proved.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory showed that pirates will wait as long as they have to for a proper crack. That game took months to crack and yet most of the pirates did not go out and buy it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Make internet connection a requirement, and make it check for a legit CD key on launch, and also make it check the EXE file for the correct checksum.

Problem is that all of those checks can be by-past. I have seen some that use a checksum and the crack group just cracked the cd-checks an changed the checksum to match the new exe. Internet and CD-Checks are already cracked in most every game anymore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This will also be cracked. Ain't no big deal to emulate a server response according to what the game expects to get in return. And when that happens, I will be spamming the Ubisoft forums with information on how to get it. Ubisoft hasn't made one game that has been worth buying, yet they always try using the worse copy protections, and this is over the top.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The pirates will be able to play offline using a patch and the legal users will be stuck.

Nice way to generalize everyone that uses a no-cd patch. Not a single game I have is pirated and I use no-cd patches on the ones where I don't care about the online capabilities.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's important to note that needs of users/gamers differ significantly from the needs of developers/publishers. Further, the amount of money the gaming industry loses due to piracy is higher than due to what we think is bad DRM and thus don't buy a game. As a result, they'll keep plugging away at it. In as much as companies should make the whole thing easier for legitimate users, those legitimate users should put themselves in hypothetical shoes of those companies to understand DRM reasoning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...

While in the mean time, piracy on the 360 is blooming. Take BioShock 2 for example. PC version has some silly date check that prevents legit owners who got the game early from playing it (there were videos of people unpacking their games on video, only to find out they can't play it), while the 360 version of the game leaks out a week early. :rolleyes: How dense do you have to be to see that DRM doesn't help one bit? :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Instead of focusing on DRM which seems to be unfruitful, game developers should focus on content distribution. They should release their games on Steam or Impulse. By doing that, they get rid of a fair portion of the game's inevitable piracy. And they gain the opportunity to secure a decent amount of sales.

Take a look at this article about Steam: http://www.vg247.com/2010/01/29/valve-steam-has-over-25-million-accounts-unit-sales-up-205/

Over 25 million accounts and yearly 100% growth. I'm not trying to advertise for Steam or anything. It's just that, they're on top right now in the digital distribution market and developers should take full advantage of that. There's Steam Cloud to sync save files and settings and Steamworks for anti-piracy and autoupdating (useful for patches and DLC). You even have anti-cheat technology in the form of VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...PC version has some silly date check that prevents legit owners who got the game early from playing it (there were videos of people unpacking their games on video, only to find out they can't play it)...

You don't buy a game, you buy a license to play it. Delivery of game media does not automatically constitute commencement of said license to play. Likewise, I don't think one who got the game media a couple of days early should hold an advantage (within a particular market) to one who buys it in a shop on the day of release. In multi-player gameplay, a couple of days can put a gamer way ahead of competition ;)

...It's just that, they're on top right now in the digital distribution market and developers should take full advantage of that.

Having digital distribution and standard media retail products available broadens choice, but increases costs. Those costs have to be passed to licensees. A lot of people like the good old disc + serial number method, especially for games that do not require online activation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bla bla bla. Reminds me of people that say you do not have permissions to modify a console which you have legally bought and own. Tell it to someone who cares. I own this disk, I own what is on it. You try to limit me this access and I get it for free - you lose more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Problem is that all of those checks can be by-past. I have seen some that use a checksum and the crack group just cracked the cd-checks an changed the checksum to match the new exe. Internet and CD-Checks are already cracked in most every game anymore.

Obviously I didn't mean the methods that dont work. They'd have to come up with some sort of method that does. They can make it work, they just don't want to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Obviously I didn't mean the methods that dont work. They'd have to come up with some sort of method that does. They can make it work, they just don't want to.

Seriously? Have you even noticed that there is NO DRM that makes everyone happy?

It is not possible to exert control over something someone paid for and make them happy.

It is not possible to release a product with no control and make the people who put money into it happy.

So no, they can't 'make it work.'

heh I just got home and had forgotten the topic a bit. Anyway, your methods would be easily cracked, but they probably go a little deeper than that. I imagine at least some of the code is server side so if they cracked the disc code they stil wouldn't have the whole game, but I dunno.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.