My idea would get rid of the current forms of drm/product activations. Again, I am suggesting that what they should do to fight piracy is to use a system that would never have an effect on someone who bought the game. And if the game exe is altered, that’s what my idea would look for. if something else is altered, that would be looked for instead. It takes little effort to figure out what the crack does to a game to let it run. If that information is passed on to video card driver makers, then they can input that information into the drivers to instruct the card not to run. Like I said before, a black screen, force the min resolution, etc. Again this wouldn't have to be video card drivers. Maybe microsoft could put it out with their security patches. but have it embedded within so that you can't pick one or the other. that way if you want your pc safe from becoming a bot/infected/whatever, you have to update it. And if the people who release cracks for games make a new one, then its just a simple matter of taking that crack, putting it in the next set of drivers/updates, and so on. The point here is to make it a hassle to pirate games. Its too easy right now which is a big reason why people do it. If it becomes annoying enough, people will take the easier road and just buy the game.
Your idea won't work, here's why Your post advocates a (x) technical () legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting piracy. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it (x) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it (x) Requires too much cooperation from nVidia/AMD (x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for (x) Laws expressly prohibiting it (x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for games (x) Legal back legislation of foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats (x) Jurisdictional problems (x) Unpopularity of weird new drm ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack (x) Willingness of users to install OS patches (x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes (x) Eternal arms race involved in all drm approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft (x) Technically illiterate politicians (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with EA (x) Dishonesty on the part of companies themselves (x) Bandwidth costs that are escalated by pushing down patches ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (hdcp) ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation (x) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free (x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? (x) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses (x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: ( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. (x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down! Sorry had to be done.
Fair enough take it that way. In all seriousness, GFX card manufacturers have absolutely no interest in combating piracy it doesn't affect their business and one might argue it benefits them. So why should they be involved. Next, you're running a pirate game you know the next update might break the crack, two options update/don't update do you honestly think folk are stupid? Course not they'll wait a week for the new crack to get round the latest patch and off we go again, are we seeing the circle? Plus what does MS care, its windows dept is separate from its games dept as it should remain else it risks getting in more trouble from the regulators. Also hardware based drm, basically breaking the system before the user gets to see it for example not allowing a picture to be displayed because you detect some black listed software is implemented in hdcp and has failed there. Next your black list is subject to failure same as any other, how would you feel if your new game was broken because your burning software was some how black listed. Need i go on? Point is you'll never inconvenience the pirates they can side step any copy prevention software or drm. If the system is playable is breakable and the only people who have to jump through the hoops are the PAYING customers.
If people can crack windows activation etc which im sure isn't laid out on a plate to find (unlike gfx card drivers...) then i cant see chris's idea working at all, ever. At the end of the day, what ever counter measures are employed there will always be a way round it. Jim Gordon: What about escalation? Batman: Escalation? Jim Gordon: We start carrying semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor-piercing rounds. Batman: And? I guess they have to keep trying!
Yes, that sums up how I feel about piracy. It's not agreeable, but it's totally inevitable. If you keep trying to eradicate it everything just gets worse for everyone (read: DRM). What to do? Well, they're obliged to keep trying to defend their intellectual property, of course, and authorities are obliged to keep trying to enforce the law, but it's all for naught really. It's an insoluble problem if you look at it pragmatically, which makes all this moral posturing redundant.
In all honesty, the software companies should just stop with the protections altogether. Everything to date has been cracked. If the software companies just outright ignored the piracy, they couls save themselves investment and development money and save the end-user the headaches involved with activations and disc protections. Instead, the software companies make better software, and this will in turn reward them with more sales. Most people who have the intention of purchasing games will eventually purchase software they feel 'earned thier money'. As a side-note, the software should be registerable: Each game/program comes with a unique serial number. This serial number is only used to register your name with the software company for the sole purpose of customer support if ever needed. No registration, no customer support. The software companies save money on support also. You know, I would be willing to bet that if there was ever a piece of software that was completely 'unhackable', it would fail miserably at making a profit. At least hacked software benefits from word-of-mouth advertising (arguably the best advertising possible).
It won't affect sales, it's about quality. Even then - hardcore pirates wouldn't buy it anyway. Definitely not for high price. They'll rather find another game to play. And it's pitty these people don't realize someone had to work hardly to make that game. It's unfortunate publishers don't realize pirates will not buy game for a high price and especially with annoying DRM included. And yet more unfortunate is that developers(low profit -> closure) & honest gamers(DRM = problems) are caught in publishers(DRM) vs. pirates(lower profit) crossfire...
It will affect. Why do you think Microsoft has such a crappy product activation system, which was cracked before each version of Windows entered RTM? Market penetration - the magic words. Nobody would buy unhackable program, and it would be soon cracked. Remember, people who crack games/progz are often more skilled than devs themselves. I'm starting to think that developing different ways of making paying customers lifes harder (DRM) took more money that it actually saved - considering that lots of people get so annoyed with crappy DRMs that they start downloading games instead - I personally know some that did.
I pirates games, play a bit of them, if i like ti toss the download and go buy it, if i don't, toss the download and go back tot the games i have.
Same here. I pirated Crysis, Bioshock and Assassin's Creed, and only liked the first one. So In a couple of weeks I'm buying Crysis. Good game = my moneyz Bad game = no moneyz The way I see it, this middle ground treats the developers most fairly, rewarding good games rather than big names and aggressive advertising and hype (which were the only reasons we bought assassin's creed, let's face it ).
