Help me create the perfect DRM

[The Lunatic]

Perfect DRM system?

No DRM at all.


Those who want to get a game for free will do, why waste money and time on making a DRM that might protect you game for about a week at most.

 

[Reyalsfeihc]

That reminds me of what EA did with Battle for Middle Earth 2, where after five minutes if you were playing a pirated version of the game all your units and your base simultaneously died!

I now have a new favorite DRM.

Just think. This very idea could be implemented into any game we play on PC. All the studio would have to do is create their own custom death sequence!

For Example:
Modern Warfare 2: Nuke dropped on player within two minutes of any level
Starcraft 2: 800 AI controlled uber-banelings are spawned to take out all human players
Just Cause 2: Your grappling hook snaps in mid-air for you to only precede to be sucked into a passenger jet turbine
Max and the Magic Marker: Everything you draw now instant kills you after certain play time (had to add a kid friendly game)
Any MMO: Take away the player's entire inventory, savings, and stored items and since SOME players would enjoy their character's running around naked, make them all morbidly obese and loop Justin Bieber music during chats with NPC's.

 

[Mr. Gency]

That reminds me of what EA did with Battle for Middle Earth 2, where after five minutes if you were playing a pirated version of the game all your units and your base simultaneously died!

I now have a new favorite DRM.

Just think. This very idea could be implemented into any game we play on PC. All the studio would have to do is create their own custom death sequence!

For Example:
Modern Warfare 2: Nuke dropped on player within two minutes of any level
Starcraft 2: 800 AI controlled uber-banelings are spawned to take out all human players
Just Cause 2: Your grappling hook snaps in mid-air for you to only precede to be sucked into a passenger jet turbine
Max and the Magic Marker: Everything you draw now instant kills you after certain play time (had to add a kid friendly game)
Any MMO: Take away the player's entire inventory, savings, and stored items and since SOME players would enjoy their character's running around naked, make them all morbidly obese and loop Justin Bieber music during chats with NPC's.

Splinter Cell: No shadows, and gun jams if you execute
Assassin's Creed 2: No hidden Blade.
Bioshock 1: the splicer in the beginning kills you.

 

[Mariena]

None of you play Dj Max Trilogy I take it. Get a USB that stores all your profile data and isn't accessible via the computer. The game needs the USB in to start. Still no cracks of it to this day so I assume it's a good method.

The closest thing to it being cracked is this:http://www.bemanistyle.com/forum/f140/how-share-your-dj-max-trilogy-profile-key-friends-over-internet-51778/

Which doesn't allow simultaneous play anyway.
Here's an image of the USB.

Spoiler

To install the game you don't even need a serial but for the game to start and to save any progress you make you need the USB connected the whole time you are playing.

Popularity of the title makes a lot of difference to whether it will be cracked or not .. I don't know how popular that DJ Max Trilogy is, but it doesn't look like it's anywhere near mainstream. Combine that + a dongle, and scene groups most likely won't bother.

Steel Beasts Pro Personal Edition also has a dongle for authentication. Considering it's a hardcore/realistic armored warfare simulator, and it uses a dongle for protection, it isn't worth the effort. Thus, it remains uncracked. Not sure why they bother though with all this protection, because they're not out to make real profit from SB PPE .. they get all their money from militaries that use their Professional version (for incredible sums of money).

So you're saying because it has a dongle people can't be bothered cracking it. Isn't that a good thing?

The games are also quite popular, enough to justify a franchise of about 7 or 6 games anyway. And if you head over to playasia.com the game and some peripherals are constantly back-ordered. In terms of time to crack the game it's been available for about 2 years by now.

But in the long term all DRM gets cracked. Except Guild Wars. So I guess the lesson to learn is to make a really, really good algorithm for making serial numbers.

Never said it's a bad thing. It is simply too much effort for, I suppose, too small of a "market" to bother cracking. That's why it's not cracked.

Why people would actually bother to play Guild Wars on a private server is beyond me. I had trouble finding proper groups as it was! /offtopic

 

[Reverend Del]

To anyone saying the publishers should simply release great games that folks wouldn't want to pirate: Seriously, what the hell? Arkham Asylum wasn't one of those? Oh wait, yes it was. It's a damn fine game, and yet folks still pirated it, DA:O (not my cup of tea) is also, supposedly, a fantastic game. Still been pirated. Simple fact is that even if some developer creates the holy grail of gaming, that one perfect game with no flaws, the pirates will still have it copied and on the internet before the box art ink has dried.

OT: Gimped game features is my current favourite DRM. I pay I suffer no issues. I don't have to do something daft to play my game, I just put the disc in the tray (or boot up steam) and play my game. Done. I don't pay and Batman can't jump, Superman can't fly and Megaman can't duck...oh wait. can't shoot.

 

[Bloodstain]

What if every game had a unique code and you have to make some kind of account to download the rest of the game. You must go to your e-mail and sign in before you can download, and you must be signed in to the same e-mail every time afterwords (you can change which e-mail is need, though).

What if somebody wants to play games but has no access to the internet?

 

[Nimbus]

OT: Gimped game features is my current favourite DRM. I pay I suffer no issues. I don't have to do something daft to play my game, I just put the disc in the tray (or boot up steam) and play my game. Done. I don't pay and Batman can't jump, Superman can't fly and Megaman can't duck...oh wait. can't shoot.

I really wish people would stop holding this up as the holy grail of DRM. It doesn't work. It never works. Best case scenario, it delays the real crack by half a day.

DRM always gets cracked, and pirates always end up with a perfect coy of the game (sans multiplayer)

 

[Mr. Gency]

What if every game had a unique code and you have to make some kind of account to download the rest of the game. You must go to your e-mail and sign in before you can download, and you must be signed in to the same e-mail every time afterwords (you can change which e-mail is need, though).

What if somebody wants to play games but has no access to the internet?

Then look at my "So crazy it just might work" DRM. Just add the ability to download the "pirated" version.

 

[Bloodstain]

What if every game had a unique code and you have to make some kind of account to download the rest of the game. You must go to your e-mail and sign in before you can download, and you must be signed in to the same e-mail every time afterwords (you can change which e-mail is need, though).

What if somebody wants to play games but has no access to the internet?

Then look at my "So crazy it just might work" DRM. Just add the ability to download the "pirated" version.

So first you have some awful DRM, and as soon as it is broken you want to change it to a better one? At least that's how I understood it.
You do that it's just a matter of time before the better DRM will be broken, too?

Please correct me if I understood something wrong.

 

[AllLagNoFrag]

Thread starter, I see why you want to create this perfect DRM. However, the way DRM's are currently thought of with your data saved somewhere online requiring you to have internet connection to play the game, this just causes people to get pissed off. Then you look at games with offline stored data just getting pirated.

Even with the online stored data, these games such as Splinter Cell Conviction, Assassin Creed 2 are still getting pirated.

How about a system that uses a unique code, and requires each person to set up an account with an email address. The same code cannot be used twice, and the game sets itself up to only run on that machine.
However, if the person wants to switch computers, they can remove the code from their account after a confirmation email and then reinstall the game on a new system.
If then the old system attempts to play the game while connected to the internet, the game would be programmed to destroy several major files which will render the game unplayable. If you play it offline, though, it'll be fine. Hopefully the annoyance of having to remember to turn off their internet connection every time they want to play will be too much and they will give up.
let me know if that makes no sense.

Yes, this is probably the best thought of anti-pirate system I have heard. Though, you could patch the game with a crack that disables your internet just like how there is a "Gaming Mode.exe" that I click on which disables internet connection except with multiplayer games where it only disables the explorer (This gaming mode frees up RAM and ends un-needed processes to allow maximum performace btw).

 

[Mr. Gency]

Well it was an idea that just smacked me in the face. How it works is it secretly offers a DRM free experience and has something to distract pirates with.

 

[veloper]

In a way DRM is already 'perfect'.

The purpose of DRM is to reduce the value of second hand sales to zero. Even simple, easy to crack DRM achieves this perfectly.

Consumers who are willing to spend money on used games, won't be fundamentally opposed to buying new. They are the ones worth targetting.

Nobody will buy a used game that can only work with a crack and isn't supposed to work in the first place. Then you will simply pirate the game instead and occasionally buy a game NEW (the only transaction that will benefit a publisher).


DRM can do nothing against piracy.
**
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I think what the TS wants to hear is something other than DRM. Something to inconvenience pirates.

For that you would make every game run like a MMO (even single player), with the code for certain gameplay algorithms running only on the server.
Even this isn't adequate yet as even WOW has been reverse engineered, but I reckon Blizzard could've tried harder. WOW servers don't do all that much per player.

Maybe have data streamed to the client, only when the game advances near enough to the point it will need those textures, models etc. Leave out only small, but critical portions and leave most of the data on the client.

That means the crackers need to have access to the server code and data, to make a completely functional pirate version. It's not unfeasible to guard those servers and big brother the personel, though it would get expensive.
The crack alternative would be playing through the entire game first and explore everything (may require multiple playthroughs), before you can grab all the data, which is too much trouble to get an almost complete crack too late.

The scheme would be terribly expensive and would face similar problems as onlive and also be unavailable to most of the world. It's also the minimum requiremnt for a crack to inconvenience pirates.

 

[Khada]

What if every game had a unique code and you have to make some kind of account to download the rest of the game. So every pirated copy has the same code, as a result every one of those copies are treated as the same game.

now imagine trying to patch/hotfix an issue, or simply making thousands/millions of code variants. simply not viable.

 

[Funkiest Monkey]

The best DRM form is the one Arkham Asylum had, gimped game features.

Aha, I remember that. That was a smart move.

 

[AlphaOmega]

None.
If that is not an option: Disk Check and for online play a CD key.

I bet the money saved on over the top DRM (sup Ubisoft) would weigh up against the piracy, or not and they would still have money more in the end.

 

[daltonlaffs]

Snip (about game-gimping DRM)

I really wish people would stop holding this up as the holy grail of DRM. It doesn't work. It never works. Best case scenario, it delays the real crack by half a day.

DRM always gets cracked, and pirates always end up with a perfect coy of the game (sans multiplayer)

The reason this DRM is being touted as a "holy grail" is because it has the potential to be perfect. Why do I say this?

Frankly, pirates are human, even the hackers among them. They can't know things that they haven't witnessed. The idea behind this form of DRM, in its perfect form, is that it's not just one or two game-breaking details, but several small ones scattered all through the game in very random and unpredictable places.

Therefore, the pirates would get it day-zero, but find the first broken segment. "No problem, guys!" says the one pirate, promptly patching the break. But then something else breaks. And a third. And a fourth. And eventually, a twentieth. At some point, the pirates will collectively throw their hands up and move on. (Or, if not, it's sure as hell going to take them a while to figure everything out, and they'll always be worried about yet another feature breaking down the road.)

 

[Frapple]

Good, lasting, persistent (stats, levels, etc) multiplayer

+

CD-Key tied to online account (can be reclaimed to other account if the game is sold)