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The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

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Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#41

Post by jcl »

danparsonson wrote: post #36
mambodog wrote: post #32

Jeez guys, have none of you ever played a ROM on an emulator? You know how they save and resume? By taking a snapshot of the RAM and restoring it later on. Sure, its not great to have to take a snapshot of the 2gb+ of memory being used at runtime by a modern AAA game, but it wouldn't be hard to work out what is just content (textures, geometry, sound), and what are the variables (player location, progress, etc) and j…

> it wouldn't be hard to work out what is just content (textures, geometry, sound), and what are the variables (player location, progress, etc) and just save/load that As the saying goes - I'd love to see you try it! In order to capture the state of a running application in such a way that it can later be restored, you need, not only the memory contents, but also the processor state. Imagine that the app is in the mi…

It's not that outlandish of a proposal. The application does not need to be savable at all times; it just needs to be savable at some point, which could be a point when the game state is particularly easy to capture. For example, most applications can go into a minimized background state where almost no code is running and nothing is loaded in the graphics card.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#42

Post by NathanKP »

From the comments on the article:

"Also, you don't hold onto your saved games anymore. They do."

I'm surprised at how many people are making this mistake. Straight from the FAQ: "Will all my saved games be stored online? Yes! They will be stored both online and on your PC." -- http://support.uk.ubi.com/online-services-platform/

That, right there, is why the system will fail. The DRM will be cracked within a week of release.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#43

Post by jcl »

tumult wrote: post #29
acg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is assuming the game is complete, what if the server is sending back parts of the game in response to state saving. For instance, perhaps some of the AI is running remotely. This could explain dropping out of the game: the game is unable to continue.

They could do that. Run some portions of the game on the server, which would remove some of the game logic from the client, making any sort of crack to require adding back in instead of simply stripping out logic. They probably will not do anything non-trivial for this. It costs money to run servers, and they would have to run much more powerful servers in order to be running game logic for each player. That would ea…

It costs money to run servers, and they would have to run much more powerful servers in order to be running game logic for each player.

Heh... This is assuming that they do not realize that the more players are connected, the bigger the distributed computing cluster they have available.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#44

Post by jsz0 »

Everyone hates DRM but I feel like we're not giving the pirates enough blame here. My unscientific conclusion judging from BT sites is PC game piracy is really off the charts these days. A new PC game release often blows away popular TV shows and movies in seeders/leechers. I have some sympathy for the game makers here. If you're already facing declining PC sales and you're releasing a console port months after the initial console release the piracy factor could make a huge difference. I feel like anyone who doesn't like this DRM scheme needs to talk to their friends/family who pirate PC games and explain to them how much they're screwing up the industry for everyone. DRM isn't effective and just ends up punishing honest customers but those honest customers may have to face the reality that they just won't be getting nearly as many PC games in the future if this trend of massive piracy continues. DRM and PC pirates are the enemies here.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#45

Post by samd »

Here's a solution no one seems to consider: make video games cheaper. $50-$60 is an outrageously high price for a game, especially when most of them are of forgettable quality. The people over at Valve/Steam have been saying the same thing, and they would know, they see the sales numbers; cutting prices for their weekend deals greatly increase sales. If companies brought game prices down to a reasonable level, say $20-$30, I bet a significant amount of piraters would start buying games. The music industry is struggling to learn the same lesson, but iTunes and streaming services have shown that making content accessible and cheap means people stop pirating.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#46

Post by billybob »

sgift wrote: post #18
snitko wrote: post #2

Honestly, I believe people shouldn't be pirating videogames at all. And most gamers actually don't. So nobody's going to hate them. On the other hand, I think no one's planning to do the same thing for MS Office in the nearest future, that would be insane.

I think you miss a point in your thoughts: People will hate it because they've payed for the game. First they invest money and then they find out that due to an draconian protection scheme they are unable to play the game at their discretion. And after that happens - and now they will hate Ubisoft - a significant portion of them will probably find out that there is a pirated version out there which does not have this…

Agreed. DRM in music becomes annoying eventually - when you want to copy your files or use them in a different player.

But DRM that makes your game suck whenever your internet connection is flakey - that's going to make paying customers very angry, very quickly. It's a terrible idea.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#47

Post by Retric »

ErrantX wrote: post #21
niyazpk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Hack the game to not need to save games on a remote server. This means a hacker has to figure out the saved game format, somehow jam into the application new code to write the saved data and new code to read it, TEST IT, and get it to work. In most of the cases, there is no need to figure out the game format. Just read the binary data sent to the server and save it. Usually save game files are not that large and I…

They could (probably have) limit that approach too by signing the data (as already suggested) or encrypting it with different keys for sending / receiving.

If you can hack the client binary you can change the keys it uses/expects.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#48

Post by Retric »

danparsonson wrote: post #36
mambodog wrote: post #32

Jeez guys, have none of you ever played a ROM on an emulator? You know how they save and resume? By taking a snapshot of the RAM and restoring it later on. Sure, its not great to have to take a snapshot of the 2gb+ of memory being used at runtime by a modern AAA game, but it wouldn't be hard to work out what is just content (textures, geometry, sound), and what are the variables (player location, progress, etc) and j…

> it wouldn't be hard to work out what is just content (textures, geometry, sound), and what are the variables (player location, progress, etc) and just save/load that As the saying goes - I'd love to see you try it! In order to capture the state of a running application in such a way that it can later be restored, you need, not only the memory contents, but also the processor state. Imagine that the app is in the mi…

FYI: You can just push the stack, and read the values below yours.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#49

Post by tptacek »

cabalamat wrote: post #39

The solution to onerous DRM is: just don't buy any product using it. No-one needs to buy Assassin's Creed II; there are plenty of other computer games out there.

That's a valid point but it dodges the thrust of the post, which is that piracy is pushing the industry in this direction --- this is a mainstream title from a mainstream vendor that is making a clear and visible usability concession to protect the new release window from pirates.

Most users probably won't care (remember that we're a disproportionately vocal minority --- or, you are; my job is to make these titles worse for you, and I don't ever play video games), and vendors are going to get users to adapt to concessions like this.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#50

Post by gommm »

samd wrote: post #45

Here's a solution no one seems to consider: make video games cheaper. $50-$60 is an outrageously high price for a game, especially when most of them are of forgettable quality. The people over at Valve/Steam have been saying the same thing, and they would know, they see the sales numbers; cutting prices for their weekend deals greatly increase sales. If companies brought game prices down to a reasonable level, say $2…

Maybe, but on the other hand, on the app store where games are really inexpensive there is still a lot of piracy and a lot of developers can't make end meet because their price is too low...

So, I'm not convinced that making video games cheaper is the answer...

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