An idea to combat the piracy of PC games.

[similar.squirrel]

So, in the aftermath of the whole pool-pah that was the Crysis 2 leak, people have been acting as if this incident was going to destroy the sales of that particular game and malign that gaming platform for some considerable time.
What interests me is that people seem to think that once a game is leaked, you cannot stop people from downloading it.
I've had an idea for some time that I have suggested in threads every now and then, but it seems to have gone ignored. I'd like to know the feasibility of this method, and see if it's being used.

Basically, in the aftermath of a crack/leak, the publisher in question would flood every torrent site with fake copies of the game.
These could contain anything, junk code, the full game with a few crucial errors to stop people from using it, or even a demo to keep people a little satisfied.

People might eventually learn to distinguish between bona-fide copies and the fakes, but in that space of time, the employees uploading the fakes could alter them again.
Anybody trying to download the game would be getting a either a bad torrent of a a bad seed that would make the game unplayable upon completion of the download.
Is there a reason this doesn't happen, or does it happen and not work?

 

[Vault101]

To be honest I know practially nothing about this kind of stuff so I can't realy say how effective/feesable it would be

but it dose seem like a good idea, anything is better than slaping the legitimate buyers in the face (yes ubisoft Im looking at you!)

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

 

[similar.squirrel]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

You could arrange for the fake uploaders to get their thumbs-up, too. It would be labour intensive, but it could work.

 

[RoboGeek]

its a similar idea to what happened with arkham asylum, the torrent version of the game was missing the function to use the statues so pirates couldn't get past a certain point of the game. the problem with your idea it would take a lot of time and man power, considering how many torrent sites and different torrents there are it would only be a small term solution and would not work for very long

 

[ChocoFace]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

This.
It's not like the torrenters are that stupid. The ones i know always download torrents uploaded by those they know are legit.(wait, did that sentence make sense?)

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

You could arrange for the fake uploaders to get their thumbs-up, too. It would be labour intensive, but it could work.

Thousands of Pirates have a much larger impact on the thumbs up/down scale than the few hundred people that made the game and want to protect it.

Also; there is a comment section (where "fake, don't download!" says enough) and some torrent uploaders are well known, so torrents by them are always legit.

 

[Some Fella1]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

This is the particular problem with your proposed solution. While it could be reasonable to get a large number of employees to then "thumb up" the fake files, and publish comments about how great that file is while giving "thumbs down" to every other torrent, people will figure it out (eventually).

What your solution can do is cause a ton of chaos in pirate sites, especially if companies get large numbers of employees involved.

 

[Dr. Pepper Unlimited]

And then 1 person uploads a legit file, gets a thousand thumbs up, and everybody just downloads that file.

Several "fake" torrents have no impact if there is 1 obvious good one.

Have to agree. The pirating community is so ridiculously massive, that the sheer volume of the community alone will trump the efforts of the developers doing this. Well-known individuals in that sect (torrenting) will be able to upload legitimate copies and have the community post hundreds, if not thousands of comments stating that this particular torrent is legitimate, while people falling prey to fakes, will just simply post a comment stating that this torrent is fake. Besides, the developers have to get paid for all those labor intensive hours they spend flooding the internet with fake copies of the game. That could get quite expensive and potentially not even work, costing them even more money in the long run.

In other words, the torrent community is the House, and the House always wins.

 

[Emilin_Rose]

I always thought, why not offer a small trinket with the actual purchase of the game?

The fact is, people are not that bright. It doesn't matter that its 50c worth of plastic attached to cheap metal bits if it's a keychain shaped like, i dunno, master chief's helmet or something. They will buy it just to show it off to their friend who didn't actually buy the game.

People who are going to buy games are going to buy them, and people who aren't, aren't.

For example, I've downloaded lots of games in my time. Most of them old, a few newer ones to try them. Does that mean i'm not going to buy the actual games? No. In fact, if I like a game, i'm going to buy it whether its easy to pirate or not. The only exception was a working copy of "Mischief Makers" That i downloaded because finding a working copy is like finding kirby in the background of pokemon. It just isn't there. Now, think on this. People who pre-ordered heart gold and soul silver got little statuettes. That definitely increased sales. Just like Starfox 64 came with the rumble pack, or DK64 and the Expansion cartridge, or even back to heartgold soulsilver with the pokewalker. Yes you can pirate the game, but does the pirate get *THIS*? No they don't. Only actual customers get the awesome *this*.

It may not seem effective, but that's only if you put too much faith in the masses as a whole.

Humans are social creatures. Most would say 'it isn't worth it just for *this*', but the moment someone else has it, it suddenly becomes awkward not have it, "Oh what did you put in your pokewalker?" "actually i didn't get one" "how could you not get one they came packaged in the box?!" *shock and offense*. You see where i'm going with this? An individual person may be smart enough to see past the gimmick, but people are not. People will buy it because its cool to have, even if, on their own, if offered one just at random, would think it was silly.

Tl;dr: Cheap trinkets with popular games=more sales based on human nature

The more you know*

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

It is actually done. A non-trivial percentage of all content on torrent sites is fake garbage (though it is mostly done for movies and music, less so for games).

The reason this still does not make any noticeable dent in illegal downloads, while costing a fuckton of man-hours of work, is the very nature of how torrents work.
Even if the gabage files are constantly seeded by the companies themself (which they do by renting non-company servers), you can easily use network theory to show that it will only take an insignificant amount of time before they are overwhelmed by the real stuff.

 

[KalosCast]

As it stands, Online Multiplayer (requiring a unique serial key) has been the most effective solution to get people to buy legit copies of your game. Sure it's still theoretically possible to get around, but often times more work than it's worth

 

[Da Chi]

This is punishing the people who download a game, not the hackers. If you want to stop a problem, stop the source. Unless you can do that don't even try. That being said; remember that hackers are numerous and hard to track down. Time and time again, it's been proven that no matter what measures are taken to stop hackers, they find a way around it.

But if you think your solution would work, try getting someone to program a system to do the thumbs up and commenting automatically so there isn't a MASSIVE waste of resources and manpower.

 

[mikecoulter]

Once the real version is out there is little means of stopping people finding it.

 

[b3nn3tt]

Tl;dr: Cheap trinkets with popular games=more sales based on human nature

I'm inclined to agree with this, but the problem is that very few companies do this. What tends to happen instead is that a 'special edition' is released, which costs about three times the price of just the game, and people are far less inclined to pay that money

But if something was thrown in without the price going up, I think that it would work as you said, and people would be more inclined to buy it

 

[Smooth Operator]

Basically, in the aftermath of a crack/leak, the publisher in question would flood every torrent site with fake copies of the game.
These could contain anything, junk code, the full game with a few crucial errors to stop people from using it, or even a demo to keep people a little satisfied.

People might eventually learn to distinguish between bona-fide copies and the fakes, but in that space of time, the employees uploading the fakes could alter them again.
Anybody trying to download the game would be getting a either a bad torrent of a a bad seed that would make the game unplayable upon completion of the download.
Is there a reason this doesn't happen, or does it happen and not work?

You think this wasn't tried before?
People spam these sites as any others(if not even more because you can easily distribute viruses and trojans), I don't know if any company specifically put out fake releases but those were around since the dawn of spam.

And just like all others torrent sites find a way to sift out spam.
But the solution has the right idea, if you make the downloaded versions harder to install/run then people will be put off and a huge percentage would just give up.
As things stand now tho you are kicked in the groin with some horrid DRM should you dare to purchase a legal copy.

 

[Zannah]

How about to stop piracy, you start releasing affordable, finished games with fun gimmicks in the box, as opposed to rushed out sequel bug-fests for absurd prices with nothing but a dvd and a two page booklet?

Just sayin...

As it stands, Online Multiplayer (requiring a unique serial key) has been the most effective solution to get people to buy legit copies of your game. Sure it's still theoretically possible to get around, but often times more work than it's worth

Also, this pretty much.

 

[Fardon]

How about to stop piracy, you start releasing affordable, finished games with fun gimmicks in the box, as opposed to rushed out sequel bug-fests for absurd prices with nothing but a dvd and a two page booklet?

Just sayin...

I couldn't agree more on this one. To stop piracy devs must produce something good that will make people buy their product to actually support them.

 

[SoulSalmon]

How about to stop piracy, you start releasing affordable, finished games with fun gimmicks in the box, as opposed to rushed out sequel bug-fests for absurd prices with nothing but a dvd and a two page booklet?

Just sayin...

As it stands, Online Multiplayer (requiring a unique serial key) has been the most effective solution to get people to buy legit copies of your game. Sure it's still theoretically possible to get around, but often times more work than it's worth

Also, this pretty much.

I am Fishy and I approve this message
I know I've bought a lot of games as opposed to pirating them for gimmicks sake... Pokemon Soulsilver recently comes to mind... and I bought Donkey Kong Returns purely because you can FEEL the effort put into that game, it basically gave me a small helping of what I've been asking for over a few years and thats deserving of at LEAST my cash...

Anyway, most people will thumb a game on a torrent site if they can make it through the first level or whatever with no troubles it wouldn't be hard to release a fake torrent with only the beggining content, heck it'd be quite easy to send out a functioning copy of the game that sends IPs to the publishers and they can surely use their imagination from there.

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

How about to stop piracy, you start releasing affordable, finished games with fun gimmicks in the box, as opposed to rushed out sequel bug-fests for absurd prices with nothing but a dvd and a two page booklet?

Just sayin...

Yeah no,
by that logic, excellent, finished games would be pirated vastly less often than shitty rip-offs. Which is not the case.
The affordable part might actually make a difference, but only to those who genuinly considered buying the game and WOULD have bought it if it were 10-15 bucks cheaper, but ultimately decided against it, due to monetary concerns.
Which is what ?
10 percent of all , conservative estimate ?