The New Era of copy protection on PC games.

[El_Cid]

After being persuaded to not buy Bio-Shock, and the surprise package of SecuRom on the Kingdoms expansion for MTW2 I started to have a discussion with a mate about it all.

In recent years we've had Starforce(still do in some cases) and I guess for the amount companies spent on it, in hindsight it probably was a waste of money.

So now we have this SecuRom thing doing the rounds, with quotes around 100,000($/£?) for a license to use it, and I guess my question is why?

Why is it good for me the customer to buy a game that limits the amount of times I can install it on my PC? In the same way why was it good that Starforce could screw up my systems software.

What is it about being a paying customer that means I need to recieve that level of nuisance?

So we talked about what SecuRom(in this case) did that stopped pirate activity(a good thing imho, as I believe you need to pay for things that someone else makes).

Ok so we know it limits the amount of installs the purchaser of the game can make on one PC. What about if you had a few PC's? Can I install it a limited amount on each one? I don't think there is a compulsory on-line activation thing, so i could install that same game on a wide variety of PC's(I would need the disk to play the game though).

Then what? is that all it does - limit the legitimate users installations per PC? whats the point of that? How does that stop the pirate exactly?

My aim in this topic is to try to understand the thinking behind the post-Starforce world of PC copy protection. How is it actualy defeating the pirate, and why the paying customer has to often make a decision about buying a game at all based on the copyprotection it uses.

If you own scores of illegal games and love to get stuff for nothing you won't find me very sympathetic, BUT i think looking at the whole history of copy protection we are moving into a new level of strategy from the gaming companies, and it will be interesting to see what people care to post here.

[Bkeela]

If this is the way the industry is going, I simply won't buy games. I don't think I'm alone.

[Kataphraktoi]

Treating customers like criminals and utilizing police state tactics is never, ever, going to solve piracy. Another thing that will never work is the piracy loss fairy tail-the imaginary numbers put up by RIAA and company describing the losses to pirates. Things will never get on track when viewing those numbers, that dont really exist.

[conmcb25]

Nope and all it will do is piss off the consumer.

[Adagio]

I said it before and I say it again: All these anti-piracy protection schemes only creates more pirates

Does the protection stop pirates? Not really. For most games we will see a working copy available for download within a few days of release (most of the games gets released within 24 hours). And we rarely see a high selling game, that wasn't released online early

Because of all the problems there is with protection, I have decided to NEVER buy a game, that I haven't tried the full version of. And based on what I've seen mentioned in other places, it seems like I'm not the only one. If a company makes a game that can't be cracked, then they've made a game I'll NEVER buy

So why waste $100,000+ to get a protection that only "protects" the game for a few hours? Spend the money on making the game better instead


The only effect anti-piracy protection has is annoying customers, pirates gets the better deal (get the game faster than you can get to store to buy it, don't have to waste time changing cd's when playing a different game, don't risk the cd/dvd getting unreadable and don't get angry when the dvd drive stops working, etc). The only negative side for pirates is that it's often not possible to play online (but hey, isn't that the selling point for most games? So fair enough)

[Ben Kenobi]

I hate copy protection too. Most games that I will buy I would have seen many others play and enjoy before I'm going to spend the money to buy the game. Just not a good use of my time and money to waste it on games that I don't have a good idea of what I am going to be getting.

[Adagio]

While talking about anti-piracy I have to say that what movies are doing is also trying make pirates it seems. Some of the movies I have bought on DVD has a 20-30 sec. video (non-skip able) about how piracy is wrong, but every time I see it I'm seriously considering downloading the movie, just to get rid of it, even though that means a small hit in picture quality. If I knew which movies has this, I would probably not buy them

[DrSpike]

Yarrr ye all be walkin' the plank!

[Proteus_MST]

So do I understand this correctly?

SecuRom allows you to only install a game a limited numbr of times on the same PC?
(without renstalling the OS or doing some fiddling with the registry I assume)

And Kingdoms for MTW 2 makes use of SecuRom?


Too bad for the Creative Assembly.
Normally I would have bought Kingdoms befor the end of the year.
But if above said is true, I definitely won´t do it.

Although I assume that the expansion is worth its money, I won´t spend any of my money to support restrictive (protection?)- mechanisms like these, which is why I also don´t buy any of the several Non-CDs that the music industry has produced during the last few years (i.e. those CDs that, because of Copy protection cannot be run on any CD player and therefore don´t fully adhere to the red book standard for CDs) no matter how good the songs on them are.

[Quillan]

MTW2: Kingdoms uses SecureRom for its copy protection. That is true.

SecureRom only allows a certain number of installations on a given PC. This is not necessarily true, as I understand it.

As I understand it, the developer who chooses to use SecureRom has many choices in how to implement it. The version chosen by Irrational for Bioshock required internet activation before the software would work and limited installations to 2, but the outcry over this was changed in less than a week to allow up to 5 installations each on 5 different PCs (if I remember correctly). I do not know specifically what version was implemented on Kingdoms or what restrictions it has.

Personally, I think the copy protection is a silly waste of time and money. All it does is inconvenience the legitimate purchaser, while the pirate can easily work around it.

[Akaoz]

I buy all my games, but I only use the pirated versions. Most of the time I don't even unpack my originals unless I need a cd-key to play online or I want to read the manual (Civ ).

Thankfully this is legal where I live, for now...

Why do I use Pirated versions when I own the original? To get around the need for CD's that can break (or more often get lost) and away from anoying "anti-pirate" viruses that mess with my machine in ways I don't like.

And I've yet to see a game I wanted to play that didn't get cracked. Some, esp SF protected games, may take a bit of time, but thay have all shown up.

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by Adagio
If a company makes a game that can't be cracked, then they've made a game I'll NEVER buy.

So why waste $100,000+ to get a protection that only "protects" the game for a few hours? Spend the money on making the game better instead.

QFdoubleT

[snoopy369]

Direct2Drive is hopefully the wave of the future... the online distribution model allows for a more effective installation model, while having no CD check, of course.

[Ben Kenobi]

While talking about anti-piracy I have to say that what movies are doing is also trying make pirates it seems. Some of the movies I have bought on DVD has a 20-30 sec. video (non-skip able) about how piracy is wrong, but every time I see it I'm seriously considering downloading the movie, just to get rid of it, even though that means a small hit in picture quality. If I knew which movies has this, I would probably not buy them

I hate that so much! They used to let us fast forward through the old warning so we could get to the good stuff right away rather then having to sit and wait there until the 'protection' stuff is finished.

[Kataphraktoi]

The little people need protection for their own good.

Dont rag the music industry for looking out for society