Copy Protection. Securty measure or an absolute waste of money?

[PsYkHoTiK]

What do you guys think?

The industry (movies music and games) spend tons of money on this. Why? To prevent illegal copies from being made. All of us know that it at times is counter productive to the people who actually buy the real thing.

Everybody does it. Games, Movies, music, software. Just about everything.

I buy my games but I usually end up cracking them anyways (for PC games) because I find it stupid that I have to insert the discs (for the copyright protection to check the disc if its legit or not) when it doesn't need to load anything.

I have a friend that had problems with WGA even though he had a legit copy installed. DRM sucks. The Zune suffers from lag due to it checking the DRM encoded MP3s.

Should I even mention StarForce? I REFUSE to buy ANY game with Star(f*ck)Force on it. No matter how good the game is.

Why is it that just about everyone is so anal about spending money on copyright protection when all it does is impair the experience of people who actually buy the stuff? Empire23 covered it briefly in his C&C 3 review. He brings up a VERY valid point. Most of the time, PC games are cracked even before they hit retail. So it goes to show that the game developers/publishers are wasting money on things that not only impairs your experience (as a customer), doesn't work well (coz it gets cracked even before you can buy the damn thing) and further more, pass the buck on to you. Ain't that dandy?

Now historically, people have always come up and said, oh you can never crack this. It's foolproof. Bla bla bla bla. Then in a reasonably short period later. Boom bypassed. *insert foot in mouth* Patch it up. Boom bypassed. *insert other foot in mouth* Thats what they said about DVDs (so much for that) when it first came out, thats whats happening now with Blu-ray and HD-DVDs. EMI has just recently announced it plans to sell non-DRM laced MP3s on iTunes and through Zune (other studios will follow except Warner - Come on now! ) Companies are finally getting the message.

My solution? Just don't bother. if there is a will, there is a way. They will get through to it one way or another. You claim that it will make it harder on them. These "security experts" can claim that this or that method is secure. Then the *cracking community* will show them its futile. There is no such thing as full proof. The industry can't go after these people because they aren't breaking the law. I remember some companies have tried going after Paradigm (if I remember correctly) for cracking the security codes that allowed pirated games to come out. Paradigm won. You know why? They don't do piracy. They just crack the software.

So why bother. Spending money on it is pointless coz it gets cracked anyways, it disgruntles your customers, you loose on both counts. Give up and spend money on other aspects (like making a game that doesn't need patches on the first day! )

EDIT: I do not condone any acts of Piracy. There's a thin fine line between cracks and piracy.

Since this is on the thin line just stay within the bounds of the rules. Not pointing or saying people have asked but just want to avoid it.

Originally Posted by rules

- No queries about or links to warez, pirated software, cracks, or any other illegal activities allowed! All such queries and links will be deleted without warning.
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[hyper_raider]

In a sense i agree with your statement. There will always be people who pirate games, but there are also people who actually buy games if the games is good (applies to other things like music and DVD's). There will always be some amount of people who will actually buy legit copies just to support the company (I know i have)

If the game is good why burden people from all this copyright thing. I say this all crap is bull and should be removed, this is one of the reasons why i refuse to buy MP3's because of the DRM

[neverthar]

Like psyk's said, it's a goddamn waste of time. Star-feck-farce and secure-whatever-rom just irritates people like hell. Case in hand was one of our revieweres damned unpleaasant expereince with CnC. Why the hell make things hard after paying our hard earned money for it? Might as well pay a tenth of it for Captain Jack Sparrow's version which has the circumvention of it

[Adrian Wong]

IMHO, copy-protection just creates animosity in legit users. People who pay good money for games and other software expect to be treated right, not like criminals.

Frankly, they got it totally wrong. Everyone is considered a criminal and they don't even care about proving you innocent.

Right out of the box, the software is already copy-protected. You can't even make a copy of it for backup purposes... not unless you hack it anyway. And that makes you a criminal according to these developers, even though it should be your basic and undeniable right.

Developers that force you to keep the CD/DVD inserted when you run the game / application is even worse. It's like using a dongle to control access to the software, except it's worse because while that CD/DVD is in the drive, you cannot use the drive to read another CD/DVD.

IMHO, if they want to cut down on piracy, the answer's pretty simple. Make it cheap enough that people won't bother with pirates. They can always sell cheap, web-downloadable copies. The cost to them will be really minimal, certainly far less than making a retail pack.

But they will get to penetrate the market that the pirates are cornering now. And I believe they will make a LOT more money selling their software / games at a cheaper price but much higher penetration than they would at high price but limited penetration.

They would also be able to save on the cost of developing ever more elaborate and expensive systems to prevent piracy. And needless to say, they can save on their lawyer fees as well as "contributions" to SPA and BSA.

[Chai]

Although Steam is a crap software, but I think the concept works.

[NoFormz]

Steam is one of the most unique tool developed by Valve. Well, I'm not good with the technical details but I'll just put it this way. Steam automatically installs a crack for your game. The downside is, instead of installing a crack that is 'bout few hundred KB, it somehow copies some game files from the original game folder which you've installed in into the Steam folder, which occupies a few hundred MB.

Since big capacity HDD are getting cheaper and cheaper nowadays, I think that is not much of a problem. And you can save all the time that the copyright protection used to check the disc if its legit.

[Chai]

Originally Posted by NoFormz

Steam is one of the most unique tool developed by Valve. Well, I'm not good with the technical details but I'll just put it this way. Steam automatically installs a crack for your game. The downside is, instead of installing a crack that is 'bout few hundred KB, it somehow copies some game files from the original game folder which you've installed in into the Steam folder, which occupies a few hundred MB.

Since big capacity HDD are getting cheaper and cheaper nowadays, I think that is not much of a problem. And you can save all the time that the copyright protection used to check the disc if its legit.

I think it's possible to crack the game and bypass steam activation all together though.

[PsYkHoTiK]

I think steam as well as a few other games connects to a master server. This is a somewhat effective way of circumventing piracy. It binds the cd keys to user accounts.

Another good approach is like the ones on the PSP and PS3. Continous firmware updates are required for new games (that use newly added features). By having a continously updated firmware, it prevents any potential hacks and loop holes. Downside is that you have to download them. But they make it very easy for the PS3 and PSP. Just use the network update to get online through wifi and download and install the updates.

[NoFormz]

Originally Posted by Chai

I think it's possible to crack the game and bypass steam activation all together though.

Yes you can do it for single player, but if you want to play multiplayer, you'll need the original CD-Key. And I think it's the same for all the other games as well.

And in most cases, I buy originals because I want to play multiplayer. But I think I'm a little off topic?

[PsYkHoTiK]

Hehehe.

Lets not go into piracy... forum rules. Discussing about cracks are ok I guess (since its on topic) but no linking or mentioning where to obtain them.

Just a heads up to people.