Building a Better Kind of DRM

[DeadlyYellow]

2. Be Sneaky
While probably more effective at deceiving crackers (although if Arkham Asylum really was cracked before it was released, it may not be), it is absolutely imperative that everyone knows that the bad gameplay is due to DRM. Otherwise, you'll get pirates complaining about the game to potential customers.

Or not, delete the related posts that spring up and ban the user stating you had "Moral obligations to protect our paying customers." But then there's the risk of someone suffering the inevitably hiccup that causes the game to behave that way anyway.

You do not want to make pirated versions of the game broken! If someone who has pirated the game enjoys it, he'll not buy it later because he already owns a copy.

I fixed the logical folly in your statement.

Shamus: I'm surprised you haven't retouched on your previous idea about releasing printed versions of the game for reviewers and anyone else who gets an early copy.

 

[Royas]

You re-explained almost the exact business strategy that caused Iron Lore to go bankrupt.

Yes, you can make games behave like a buggy piece of shit for pirates(until they crack that too, often within hours, if they don't see through your ruse immediately). But those pirates will whine on the forums, and more often then not they will do it before release. And when a legitimate buyer who might have been interested in your game game sees the general discussion forum have 100 posts total and the technical support has 1500 unanswered threads in the last 24 hours, what will that person think? Will it be "Wow this drm is very effective, i need to support tis developer" or "This game looks like a broken mess, i better save my money"? History has shown us that it's most likely the latter.

Hence why you tell the consumer. Not only will it help them know they're safe, but the pirate, if they know what they've done and have any intelligence at all, will be afraid to report it for fear of capture. In fact, if they DO report these problems, hopefully they will try to track down the poster and find out if indeed he is pirating. I think it's brilliant and has no downside to the customer.

Problem with that is, it makes a really convenient excuse for the developer or publisher when things don't quite work right. Much cheaper to claim that it's a deliberate trap rather than spending time and money fixing a bug that only affects a small percentage of the customer base. Additionally, if the devs start doing this, I'll bet we'll see a huge number of these trap bugs become real bugs when the trap implementation gets screwed up. Any part of a game's code can be buggy, including the part that implements these bugs.

The only good aspect I see to the deliberate bug method is this: Developers will have to stop blaming the publishers for the DRM. It was always a shared blame, but now the devs will have to do a lot more work to implement it, making their portion of the blame a lot easier to see.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Honestly DRM is irrelevant. It's merely a hurdle, a HURDLE to hop over.

Adobe are masters of putting in anti piracy measures as far as having to call them for code. It STILL got cracked.

The only hing anti piracy software really works on is MMOs since content is constantly upated and controlled by the makers mostly.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Everyone remember when half life 2 came out and the activation servers were borked, preventing legit customers from playing hours after the pirates got their copy?

 

[Ridonculous_Ninja]

Regardless, I like the CD or online activation check and I love what Batman did, perhaps this but to a greater extent would be the best part.

What Batman did failed miserably. The pirates have working copies, and the game isn't even out yet, thus rendering it a waste of time and a pile of money down the crapper.

That's why I said to a greater extent. It isn't that hard to change a bunch of coding that the pirates will spend hours digging away to find. Especially if it's buried later in the game.

What if the check deleted the save game of the pirate when they reached a certain part of the game and did a certain action?

And then closed the program.

And have multiple checks through out the game.

 

[Andronicus]

Two it may also stop people from reporting bugs, (More so with online games) Because they may think that they might be seen as a pirate and get banned from playing.

Three, what happens if there's a bug that cause the same problems with legit customers as it does with pirates, i.e jumping becomes unresponsive. Wouldn't that be a little difficult to tell whether it's a pirated version or an actual legit problem?!

If they have purchased a legitimate copy of the game, and there is a problem, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to report it. I'm assuming they did get proof of purchase when they bought it?

It's on the heads of the developers to release a bug free game to the public. The legitimate public.

Incidentally, do official updates and patches work on pirated games?

 

[JohnSmith]

Why don't some of the big companies just spend the DRM money on getting a security firm to write some really horrific computer viruses and a week or three before release "leak" the games source code.

 

[Macar]

I like this idea- take the fight to the pirates. But as some people said, if it's too subtle it could lead to negative talk being out there which could hurt the game. As you said, they'd have to be very public about annoucning that they have little bombs planted in the game. It would help if there were some annoying messages in the game, like game dialogue replaced with "LOL, U PIRATED THIS GAME!!! U SUXXX!!!

It could actualy be tons of fun/ a full time job to cook things like this up! How about sudden loud bursts of sound, or creepy immages flashing on the screen? How about stealing all the player's ammo when he reaches a fight? The pssibilities are fun and endless

Oh, and I think you forgot one, the publisher could seed massive ammounts of bugged or misleading torrents onto the web. Of course, eventualy these would get weeded out, but it would slow it down in the start. I donno, maybe the publishers could release a buch of virus-laden content that activates after a while. Stories like that would definately make the more casual pirates think twice.


ps:

If someone who has pirated the game enjoys it, maybe he'll buy it later.

I think we all know this is bull.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

That would be a dream job.
"Yes, sir! I will seed virus laden torrents of our game to pirates and I will take part in massive DDOS attacks."

that is until their legal staff ask the question,

"What happens when an ordinary joe not related to the pirate activities gets hit by one our viruses b/c the pirates decide to then pass our viruses on to ordinary joe? How soon will we stay afloat before we go bankrupt from all the lawsuits. Not to mention the mess we will see from the law side of things."

 

[Snotnarok]

I've pirated a game just to see if it'll run, I had to do that with Gears of War for a friend, I don't want to hear "then just get the demo" some games DON'T have demos and it's enraging that they don't.

So that's about as far as I go with pirating stuff, only to make sure buying the game will work out in the end, otherwise you buy it, you open it, you're boned because it won't run and you can't return opened games.

DRM has steared me clear of PC games before, I wanted to buy Riddick, but that has DRM, Farcry 2, DRM, I do not like the DRM that limit your installs, all it does is hurt your customer since the bloody thing is out on a torrent site 2 days before the game is out.

 

[WhiteTiger225]

You know deep down that it'll never work. The pirates will adapt. If you make it impossible to simply remove the check, the pirates will simply find better ways of fooling the check.

And besides, worst case scenario it takes longer to crack, and even batman was completely playable a week before release.

DRM can't win. It practically a fact of life.

So you suggest we dont bother at all? Every time and advancment is made, It is bound to be made redundant at some point in the future, but this dosent stop people inventing. As long as we can stay ahead of the pirates for long enough to make ends meet any advance is welcome in my book. And if its unobtrusive as Shamus suggests, all the better.

Every time an advancement is made, we the consumer suffer for it. I would LOVE to play my old copy of Lord of The Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth. But seeing as I lost the game manual when I was forced to move, It is unplayable. I have the four disks, called up EA (Which was kinda like asking Donald Trump for a handout...) got told I am fucked despite owning the disks, and I don't really feel I should have to buy a entire new set of disks WITH a manual just to play a game I rightfully own...

 

[WhiteTiger225]

Regardless, I like the CD or online activation check and I love what Batman did, perhaps this but to a greater extent would be the best part.

What Batman did failed miserably. The pirates have working copies, and the game isn't even out yet, thus rendering it a waste of time and a pile of money down the crapper.

That's why I said to a greater extent. It isn't that hard to change a bunch of coding that the pirates will spend hours digging away to find. Especially if it's buried later in the game.

What if the check deleted the save game of the pirate when they reached a certain part of the game and did a certain action?

And then closed the program.

And have multiple checks through out the game.

Here's what develoepers don't get. We as mankind will NEVER make a uncrackable program that can be passed to someone without fear of hacking. You will NEVER stop, or even lessen the amount of hacking, the most you will do is delay the pirates an hour.. maybe 24 hours at most. Hell, look at most online FPS games. MPGH gets hacks up for games that just had a MAJOR security REHAUL in less then an hour.

 

[iblis666]

drm is useless pirating really doesnt hurt the company that got its stuff pirated, since the pirates are a small group of people most of which couldnt afford the stuff anyway. But what does hurt them is the drm since it costs cash to develop and causes the consumer to rethink if they really want to buy it. Such as spore which to this day i will not touch even though i liked the creature creator because i heard its drm is so strict.

 

[s0p0g]

you don't need to stay ahead of them pirates. you should give them a reason to actually BUY a game. first of all that means making good games, not the clone of a clone of a clone... you get it.
but also, if i look at them prices, i just cannot help but think that they are somewhat too expensive. so, DRM is about securing the big publishers' money - fine. BUT: if they wouldn't waste so much money for developing new copy protection crap (that is cracked even before the official release of the game), they could say "f**k it", don't protect it at all (like one or the other dev/publisher actually does today), and make the games five or ten bucks cheaper. Thus, more people will actually buy the game instead of thinking "damn, i cannot afford it, so i'll have to download it" they'll say "nice, a reasonable, human price at last"

I think.

 

[likalaruku]

I like the kind of DRM Arkham Asylum got where the game is super-buggy if you're playing a pirated version. If Rocksteady or Eidos ever becomes strapped for cash, they can easily hunt down pirates by seeing who's posted videos of said glitches on youtube.

 

[Dys]

It does not solve the real problem. Making and maintaining copy-protection costs money and pirates can circumvent all of it for free forever. Galactic Civilizations 2 was the best selling PC game of its release year and it had no copy-protection. If developers want people to stop pirating their games, they should abandon copy-protection and include cloth-maps with the retail release. That way legitimate customers get a better deal than pirates, so more people will choose to buy the game rather than pirate it.

I'm not usually one to /thread a post, but..well, /thread.

Giving incentive to legitimate buyers, even if it's just cheap gimmicky shit will beat out DRM every time. A cloth map, a poster, included concept art etc are all good things that pirates miss out on. No matter what DRM you use, you are going to fuck the legitimate consumer over as well. How much would it suck if you paid for Batman AA and the DRM decided, for whatever reason, you were a pirate, doesn't sound like fun to me. Imagine how many 'bonus' extras you could package with the game in the place of DRM, it would be such a strong deal maker and the pirates would get none of it. Sewblon is absoloutely right.

 

[aaron552]

For someone who wants to *play* the game, however, the harder it is to find a good cracked copy, the more likely they are to say "Screw it, I'll just go buy a good copy" And yes, that does happen.

You speak the truth. I didn't buy Mass Effect when it originally came out for PC, partly because I didn't have $100 at the time, and partly because I knew the DRM was ridiculously draconian. After waiting for a few months, I borrowed a friend's copy and went looking for a crack. I couldn't find one that didn't require jumping through multiple hoops on every game start. Guess what? I said: "Screw it, I'll just go buy it". I bought a copy for $59 a few days later.

I still hate the activation, because I don't uninstall games, but I do format and reinstall Windows every now and then. I dread the day when EA tells me that I can't activate the game anymore. Hopefully it won't come too soon, but I have vowed to give an EA rep an earbashing when it does.

 

[shMerker]

I thought this was a humor piece, and yet everyone is taking it at face value. Now I'm a little confused.

 

[Andronicus]

you don't need to stay ahead of them pirates. you should give them a reason to actually BUY a game. first of all that means making good games, not the clone of a clone of a clone... you get it.
but also, if i look at them prices, i just cannot help but think that they are somewhat too expensive. so, DRM is about securing the big publishers' money - fine. BUT: if they wouldn't waste so much money for developing new copy protection crap (that is cracked even before the official release of the game), they could say "f**k it", don't protect it at all (like one or the other dev/publisher actually does today), and make the games five or ten bucks cheaper. Thus, more people will actually buy the game instead of thinking "damn, i cannot afford it, so i'll have to download it" they'll say "nice, a reasonable, human price at last"

I think.

If you make the most fun, innovative game in the world, remove DRM, include an "incentive" like a cloth map or whatever, and stamp it with a AU$30 price tag, people will still pirate it. People don't pirate games because they cost too much, people pirate games because they don't want to pay anything for it, and make vague statements about how things are too expensive. I think games are too expensive, and yet am loathe to even consider torrenting games. All DRM has done is make torrenting more logical, because it punishes the consumers and not pirates.

Until someone invents a SecuROM code based on quantum physics, with marginal impact on the consumer, piracy will never die.