111–120 of 123 posts
You want an anti-pirate system that will work? That's easy, we've had a working system for centuries! You hang 'em from the yardarm as a warning to others, and then you burn their ships to the water line. Pardon? Oh, you mean the OTHER kind of piracy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this the type of "check at startup" that the article mentions hackers can easily null out?
Maybe game designers should take lessons from Skype in making it as hard as possible to disassemble/hack the binary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wo…
What's funny is that they're making it more convenient to play the pirated version than the legit version. The more invasive DRM you force on your legit users, the more they're going to look for workarounds online and fuel piracy.
I only notice Apple's DRM in iTunes when I have to de-authorize an old computer or authorize a new one, which is only once or twice a year at most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a test on Ubisoft's part. They're testing how the crackers, pirates and market react. I'm sure if they make significantly less money than expected they'll scrap the idea. On the other hand if they make more money, they'll roll it out to future releases. My guess is that they'll make less money. Even if a some people buy the game instead of pirating it, the abysmal reviews on Amazon will have a stronger effect…
> I'm sure if they make significantly less money than expected they'll scrap the idea. OR they'll still blame piracy and try to make it even harder. until it's nothing more than a streaming webcam pointed at a TV playing it on an xbox.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Well obviously pricing them too low won't make you any money. There is a big difference between 25 dollars and 99 cents.
People still argue that $1 is too much for music, like somehow in teh internets that dollar is worth 100x more than the real world where it gets you close to nothing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Well obviously pricing them too low won't make you any money. There is a big difference between 25 dollars and 99 cents.
OT: For rick888, below: it seems that all your comments are marked as dead... which is a pity because from reading your past comments I can't figure why you'd be banned... You should try to contact pg over that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's funny is that they're making it more convenient to play the pirated version than the legit version. The more invasive DRM you force on your legit users, the more they're going to look for workarounds online and fuel piracy.
Why is more pervasive DRM necessarily more of an inconvenience for the user? It will be an inconvenience for an unfortunate minority, but a well designed and executed system could well be unnoticed by most. I only notice Apple's DRM in iTunes when I have to de-authorize an old computer or authorize a new one, which is only once or twice a year at most.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not settled computer science that the content protection problem always favors attackers, although it's clear that the state of the art does. I'm only reacting to the "laws of physics" comment you're making. It's not true that "if you can execute it, you can read it", at least for important definitions of "read" (that include "understand" or "modify"). Take, for an example, white box cryptography. Some problems…
What would be a summary of that part of "White Box Cryptography" which is new and distinct from the software obfuscation techniques that have been around for most of the history of programming? Is it more than just a bit of mathematical formalism applied to such? That's all I can tell at a first glance.
Basically, WBC is a set of very dedicated obfuscation techniques to implement a cryptographic scheme in a "secure" way.
IMHO, The main disction with "usual" obfuscation is the following:
* Obfuscation is a computer science term that refers to hardening a given application, such that it is difficult to reverse engineer. That is, to make it difficult to understand what functionalities are implemented, and how.
* In white-box cryptography on the other hand, an adverary will know that a specific scheme (such as the AES) is implemented, and how it is implemented: the compiler and program specifications are public; the cryptographic key, and the randomness that is used at compilation-phase is private. This is similar to the Kerckhoffs-principle in cryptography, where the security of a scheme should not break down when the specifications of a scheme are known.
There have been some attempts to formalize white-box cryptography. See https://www.cosic.esat.kuleuven.be/publications/article-1260...
If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me. In the near future, I plan to setup a webpage on http://www.whiteboxcrypto.com where I will adress these issues, and explain how WBC works.
Best regards, Brecht Wyseur
"Probably work"? It was already cracked two weeks before release! From a few days ago on Buzz: Just saw a post on the Steam Forum for Assassin's Creed 2 that the impossible to beat, always online, can't save your game or even play the stupid thing without being connected to the internet DRM for it has already been cracked 2 weeks before its release. sigh Did Ubisoft really expect this to work any better than previous…