View Full Version : Copy Protection
CiNiMoDZA
30-08-2007, 01:46 PM
I was reading through one of the Dev.mags and came across Dislekia's article on copy protection! Since copy protection can be expensive for independent developers like ourselves, I decided to try make one myself! Its not anything amazing, but maybe you guys can improve, please just put it up when you've improved it!!!
http://gamedev.openhazel.co.za/filecloset/data/files/172/Copy_Protection.zip (3k)
UntouchableOne
31-08-2007, 12:14 AM
I have also been thinking about copy protection lately. Reading your thread has sparked something in me to create what I was thinking. It takes a different approach than you did but I think it would be quiete secure.for security reasons I cannot state the method(secret service voice). If I tell you, I'd have to kill you :).
dislekcia
31-08-2007, 01:27 AM
Guys. I admire the effort and enthusiasm, but you should always be asking yourself a very simple question: "Is this making my game better?". If the answer is no, then don't do it... Copy protection is something you should only think of right at the end of development, when you're sure you've got something that will do well. Up until that point it's a waste of time.
Even then it's not something I would bother putting a lot of effort into. Your smartest systems are still going to get cracked if your game is big enough. Buy a copy protection system or enforce a web-enable system for patches and you'll be fine. In a way if someone is willing to pirate your game, you know that you've made it good enough ;)
-D
UntouchableOne
31-08-2007, 06:56 AM
I know what you mean Dis. Any game can be cracked now easilily. With the right tools and some understanding in hex it takes a few minutes. It would be safer to purchase copy protect software but for most of us indie developers it is not possible as there is little or no cash flow so if we spend a few minutes creating a makeshift system that would secure at least a few sales its worth it, in my opinion. It can hurt to try.
Fengol
31-08-2007, 07:48 AM
I think Dislekcia's worried you'll spend more than a few minutes on it; and all the time you're spending on building copy protection is time you're not spending working on your game.
You shouldn't be worried about selling your game until it's completely finished and polished.
UntouchableOne
31-08-2007, 11:12 AM
Fair enough. It would only be usefull if we finish a game. This is a bit off topic but kinda on topic too. Are you guys aware of the ADS within all NTFS hard drives where hidden data may be stored without the user knowing or tracing it(unless they know the procedure)?
CiNiMoDZA
31-08-2007, 11:28 AM
Ja, I agree about the maybe dont do it till you finished a game, but i was bored while I was waiting for my friend to arrive :P My whole theory on releasing games is, if you release it at a reasonable price, and its a decent game of course, people wont mind paying for it!!! The only reason people pirate games is because of the ridiculous prices that you have to pay for 5 hours of entertainment!!!
Korax
31-08-2007, 01:51 PM
Dont worry too much about copy protection now, only if you are selling it and you have thousands of people intrested. At the end anything is crackable, all it really does is minimize the piracy effect.
At the end, any publicity is good publicity, especially when you are at the point to firstly get everyone intrested in your product.
dislekcia
31-08-2007, 03:12 PM
And you can get perfectly reasonable software protection stuff in the region of $100. Anyone should be able to beg/borrow/invent that kind of money. Especially if you show friends/family/each other an awesome game.
Heck, I reckon that at some point in the future we might all be passing a hat around to buy a copy protection system licensed to Game.Dev so that you guys can all use it.
And Korax is right: Piracy can indeed help your exposure. There are huge debates about it, but in the end it's something you just have to live with. I can guarantee that very few people in SA at the moment are actually thinking in numbers large enough for piracy to be a major issue.
-D
Korax
31-08-2007, 05:04 PM
Thats a pretty nice idea you got there!
I dont want to get too much into this subject on a personal level, BUT.
I have this way of firstly geting a copy and check it out for a hour or so, see if I like it then either delete it or buy it.
In my own personal collection of music and software I only have legal, bought merchandise, but most of my stuff started somewhere with an illegal copy.
For instance: Im a huge Manson fan, I got all his albums, biographies, live shows etc, but before that I had an illegal copy on tape back then of one of his first records, I got hooked and eventually I owned all his work legally and paid for.
But I guess its a sensitive subject, and requires reasonable balance.
One thing that sickens me is the piracy industry.
The other day on the news they had this bullitin where the police cracked down on a house that was fully rigged for creating pirate copies of the newsest movies, music and games.. stacks and stacks of illegal stuff ready to go onto the streets.
Thats so wrong!
I can understand sometimes why the entertainment industries go to so much lengths, and I support them in this, solong they dont make things a hassle for the legal buyer.
Sorry, I think I went a little bit off-topic here. ;)
Well, software and the internet are probably the most powerful combination in the history of humankind with regards spreading information virally. At its core, its software's second nature to be copied if you know what I mean? It was born to be duplicated.
Selling software as units (games, tools, operating system etc) is problematic for all the reasons discussed. I just don't buy the "get a crack and then if you like it buy it theory".
THAT'S WHAT DEMOS ARE FOR. Demos are legal. They should give you the gist of what the app is about, and that is all you should need to make a decision. However, I would probably be persuaded into agreeing that piracy is one of the driving forces in the games industry, based on the fact that "underground subcultures delving in word of mouth activities" helped build demand. (And of course, games are cool to the rest of us too).
Companies like Nintendo worked very hard to combat counterfeit cartridges for its earlier systems, because they're a software company as much as they are a hardware company, and the software and hardware drove each others sales. If I were a hardware producer, I would probably not mind pirating, as it would drive my hardware sales. I guess we should leave this stuff to the actuarial scientists to figure out though. I'm starting to bore myself.
The only reason people pirate games is because of the ridiculous prices that you have to pay for 5 hours of entertainment!!!
What?! How many hours and how many resources went into making those five hours? You think a couple of hundred rand is a ridiculous figure? C'mon. The cost of $50 for a game has been the norm since 1980.
I think what is more interesting is using the viral element to your advantage by trying out different models. i.e. get paid for the development in a way other than a straight cost per unit scenario. Where the way of nature: i.e. copying: is used as part of the system. We see this in many shapes and forms already...
Dale.
CiNiMoDZA
01-09-2007, 08:11 PM
What Im saying is, Im paying R300 for Oblivion, a 50+ hour game, and then R300 for say Tomb Raider Legend!!! Tomb Raider Legend is one of my favorite games of all time! I probably wouldn't have played it on all the different difficulties if I wasn't such a fan, but it only took me 7 hours to complete??? Now they've released Anniversary, using the exact same engine! Fair enough, some work has gone into the game, but not a huge amount! Now why can't we pay for what we getting is all Im trying to say!
Gazza_N
01-09-2007, 08:23 PM
The question is, then, how do you quantify "what we're getting"? Play hours? Prey was a relatively short game, but looking at the quality of the graphics, sound, levels and puzzles, it obviously took them a lot of time and resources (read money) to make. And that's without throwing in the biggest expense of all - marketing, which should remain fairly constant among any AAA games. No, things are a little more complex than (heaven forbid) pay-per-hour.
UntouchableOne
01-09-2007, 10:22 PM
To add to what Gazza_N said, it could take you 5 hours to finish that game but it could take me 50 hours so you cant judge a games price by that.
Nandrew
02-09-2007, 01:00 AM
I use the "pizza theory".
I buy a large pizza that on the top end could, say, cost me fifty bucks. That lasts, at max, half an hour.
If I buy six of those pizzas, they last me a total of 3 hours and cost me R 300.
In light of that, gaming is already a better pay-per-hour option. ^^
tbulford
02-09-2007, 12:57 PM
Guys. I admire the effort and enthusiasm, but you should always be asking yourself a very simple question: "Is this making my game better?". If the answer is no, then don't do it... Copy protection is something you should only think of right at the end of development, when you're sure you've got something that will do well. Up until that point it's a waste of time.
Even then it's not something I would bother putting a lot of effort into. Your smartest systems are still going to get cracked if your game is big enough. Buy a copy protection system or enforce a web-enable system for patches and you'll be fine. In a way if someone is willing to pirate your game, you know that you've made it good enough ;)
-D
We went far out of way to make sure the code system in The Tainted could never be broken. The damn game was sneaky beyound expectations anyway loads of effort wen into that. We would deffinatly not waste that time ever again. Rather we would spend it making sure the game was so good that every human beineg wanted a copy and would pirate the hell out of it. As a unknown nothing could be better marketing then that.
When The Tainted hit wares sites out web site got so busy we thought we were been DOS attacked. Anyway about 100,000 sessions a month for a few months and none of those ppl ever played our game, so much for a fantastic marketing opertunity.
Gazza_N
02-09-2007, 01:07 PM
I use the "pizza theory".
I buy a large pizza that on the top end could, say, cost me fifty bucks. That lasts, at max, half an hour.
If I buy six of those pizzas, they last me a total of 3 hours and cost me R 300.
In light of that, gaming is already a better pay-per-hour option. ^^
QFT. Not to mention that a pizza has very little replay value. ;)
And listen to Mr. Bulford, CiNiMoD. He's been there.
Nandrew
02-09-2007, 01:28 PM
True, but let's bear in mind that we're looking at different project scales. The Tainted was a triple-A, high-profile offering. Your visibility was far superior to that of a more casual offering.
Let's remember that if you've got a particular type of game (casual), you're going through particular channels to appeal to a particular market which differs somewhat from the hardcore crowd. People in this market don't necessarily spend most of their time on computer games and funky gadgets, and know little about, say, torrenting, cracking or even the concept of hunting around for illegal downloads.
Dis is looking at the small-scale developer and the release of titles which aren't going to garner massive media attention, but rather get punted to the sort of people who aren't determined to set out and hack their way past any copy-prot failsafes.
It's unfortunate to hear what happened to The Tainted. Piracy can be a thorn in the side of developers who are big enough to get noticed, but not quite big enough to weather the storm of illegal copying and suchlike. However, at our level ... dude, if someone actually cares enough to go sniffing around our binaries and find a way to bypass some programmed defenses just because they're desperate enough to play more of our game ... well, w00t! ;)
(--EDIT--)
Well, look, my explanation is based on a humble opinion that you were considered an unknown only as far as the big fish were concerned. As individual hobbyist developers, we're hidden *far* lower under the radar than you guys ever were, by pure merit of scale. Also, forgive my ignorance, but wasn't the title concerned actually preceded by Toxic Bunny? You also seem to have received attention from places like Gamespot and suchlike (ad-hoc googling).
I stand to be corrected on any of these issues, and really, I'm not trying to gather the audacity to lecture you on something that you're more experienced with. But at the same time, I'd like to maintain that as small as you were, we're smaller. And that gives us a lot of convenient niches to slip through.
CiNiMoDZA
02-09-2007, 01:58 PM
Well guys, you all basically saying what I said in my readme :P If someone is going to copy your game, they will most probably find a way to copy it, so why bother taking days, or months to make a copy protection system! Mine took a little over 5 minutes :P I just hoped that my game will be appealing enough to get people to buy it!!!
EyeBall
02-09-2007, 11:07 PM
Hi Nick here
Im working on a game presantly that I plan to sell.
I have a near complete game (The sequel to http://www.nicholasnel.com/zip/bone.zip (Windows))
And I don't know the first thing about e-commerce or even making a prophit of my stuff...
well Up till now Iv made mostly Demos and bits and pieces of games (As we do when we start out) ... so I think this Is some valuable stuff for people to know. I don't know anyone
who wants to be Ripped off, and premature or not it's a good lesson learned.
The site with all my demos- http://www.nicholasnel.com (Blender engine Windoes)
Thanks for your time
Nicholas Nel
Korax
03-09-2007, 09:32 AM
Its a pretty tricky matter.
What the world must learn is that pay the people that makes the content, eventually, if piracy isnt such a huge issue, prices of products will probably become cheaper as the pressure regarding lost revenue because of piracy lessens.
Miktar
03-09-2007, 10:40 AM
Piracy will stop being a huge issue, once the industry starts to understand that piracy is a vital component to a media-centric industry. The movie industry is learning it, the music industry is well on its way to embracing it - gaming is taking it's time.
I don't believe that copy-protection is beneficial to anyone, especially not the developers and not the publishers. The only reason we have copy-protection on games these days, is due to bean-counting accountants in these giant publisher corporations.
It takes an incredibly narrow-minded approach to the holistic gaming industry to assume that copy-protection, or even the fight against piracy, is worth-while.
Korax
03-09-2007, 12:26 PM
Not to mention the pain in the hind its to the buyers of games.
It will be great if development houses do with protection what Id Software does as an example: At a launch of a product, it has copy-protection, but after the first few months or say year and a half and a few patches later, when they made the most out of their product, the copy-protection is taken-out.
The approach I dont like is for example Command & Conquer: Generals, and a few others, esp. from EA.
They copy-protect to the bitter end.
Its not very convienient to whip-out my Generals CDs just to start the game, if you take into account the game being old anyways, and are probably not much in stock anyways, taking up gigs of disk space with little or no content coming from the play-disk as you are using the software.
And they are obviously, once a year maybe patching the game, so whats with keeping the copy protection in tact, when people that didnt buy the software, and cracked it, get a better experience out of the game then a buyer like me that refuses to crack it.
DISCLAIMER:
Maybe Ive got issues.
Nandrew
03-09-2007, 01:11 PM
I think that copy-protection should be maintained as a superficial deterrent. Not something like Starforce (ohgod noes) but something to make people think about what they're doing. One might say that copy-prot could become another form of the classic "nag screen", except it's a little bit more difficult to ignore. Am I making sense to anyone?
I do like ideas similar to what Ubisoft has had. At least, the simple cogs and doohickeys in my brain are telling me that alternate income schema, like free games with in-game advertised sponsors, are a good idea to latch on to.
In fact, I'd really like to see something in Dev.Mag about alternate marketing schema, and ideas about making money without resorting to ineffective copy-protect ideas.
-------------
Also, I appear to have misinterpreted tbulford's post. Go figure. >.<
Tr00jg
03-09-2007, 02:15 PM
Yeah... Instead of investing of money to "protect" your game, rather approach some people willing to advertise in the game (skillfully, not in your face of course). Thus when it gets pirated, you get a) marketing anb b) still get revenue from ads...
Miktar
03-09-2007, 02:29 PM
Prime example of copy-protection *hurting* sales: BioShock. End result: Levine has already gone on record saying they will be removing all the copy-protection.
Nandrew
03-09-2007, 03:43 PM
Gack! Let's be fair, we're not proposing anything beyond the most superficial of copy-prot ideas.
I don't think that anybody here wants anything like the Bioshock "lock-to-machine" protection -- which is a separate ... rather ugly ... issue.
I have a sudden desire to wash my hands.
Miktar
03-09-2007, 03:49 PM
At least they admitted their mistake and they're removing the machine-lock entirely, as well as the copy protection.
Nandrew
03-09-2007, 04:29 PM
A very positive move. It's nice to know that publishers genuinely are on their toes as far as the market is concerned. ^^
Korax
04-09-2007, 03:57 PM
Well, I used to be a huge FPS fan (more into RPG now), but what I can tell you is that I do still buy FPS games if they are really extrodinary, which Boishock is one, but if I heard about their machine-lockdown protection it would have been a definite NO SALE.
I'm not very big on internet/machine depenancy when it comes to games.. Steam/HL2 (protection-wise) is already bordering on it for me.
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