The New Era of copy protection on PC games.

[Standup]

USB 2 is upto 480 mbits which i think is around 60MBs although most devices are considerably slower presumbly due to physical limitations of usb fobs.

USB dongles are often used in high end applications but I've no idea as to how effective they are.

At work we use them for several high end editing systems such as Avid but as companies are more subject to audits and prosecutions they're mainly used as an audit tool - x many dongles so x many installations.

[Kuciwalker]

USB dongles are often used in high end applications but I've no idea as to how effective they are.

A USB dongle is perfectly good for authenticating a user, but they're as worthless as a CD for copy protection.

[SpencerH]

One point that hasnt been mentioned is the lack of disclosure as to what anti-pirate software is also gonna be installed when you install a game. Unless you inhabit game sites, and you're lucky enough to spot a thread that mentions it, you're not gonna know that along with Kingdoms you're installing securom (and that there's no way to remove it short of drastic measures).

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by SpencerH
One point that hasnt been mentioned is the lack of disclosure as to what anti-pirate software is also gonna be installed when you install a game. Unless you inhabit game sites, and you're lucky enough to spot a thread that mentions it, you're not gonna know that along with Kingdoms you're installing securom (and that there's no way to remove it short of drastic measures).

QFT - it's another reason I no longer rush out to get a game on release day. I don't feel good having to rely on other gamers who may be less patient than me, in fact that makes me even more pissed off at these copy-protection tactics.

Still if the companies don't put that kind of info on the game box, or even on their website then they will continue to lose my money.

[Standup]

Yeah - I just found a securom readme in an obscure place which means I've probably managed to install it somewhere

No idea which game though.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Transfer rate from USB2.0: 800mb/s

Transfer rate from the flash memory on the USB2.0 device: at most 80 MB/s.

Sure, and what's the transfer rate from the optical CDROM media? Using buffering you can increase the media transfer rate significantly, but with a CD no more than 150 MB/s while a USB2.0 flash drive has a much higher upside (As well as the potential for technology to raise that 80 MB/s number.)

If they are useful for authenticating a user why are they useless for copy protection? The hardware authentication would be perfect, if it is impossible to emulate (we'll see if TPM is truly secure or not, I have no idea of the tech behind this but "perfect" security systems have been hacked before...) If it is, how would you hack a game if you required the USB key to be inserted (with the TPM authentication on it)?

I could even see having a 16-hub or something (if those are still TPM compatible or can be made so?) with all of your oft-used games' keys installed in it. Much easier than swapping out CDs, which you can have maybe 2 of in at once...

[Kuciwalker]

Sure, and what's the transfer rate from the optical CDROM media?

We're long past the days of partial installs where the CD contains most of the data after install. You read [meaningful amounts of] data from the CD once, when installing, and that's it. Afterward the relevant comparison is HDD speed.

If they are useful for authenticating a user why are they useless for copy protection?

Because no USB device can stop me from editing the executable so that it no longer contains the copy protection code.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Standup
Yeah - I just found a securom readme in an obscure place which means I've probably managed to install it somewhere

No idea which game though.

That sucks Standup! of course it may not ever do anything nasty....or even get exploited, but it's just a royal pain in the arse you can't get rid of it easily. If you really don't like having it on your system(do a good check to see if it is on their by the way!) then a complete new install seems to be the only way currently to make sure you can get rid of it properly.

Oh and FM 2008 does come with secuRom - although it looks like SI may be heading towards a patch that removes it(eventualy?):

http://footballmanagerportal.co.uk/blog/football-manager-football-manager-2008-beta-patch/

Anyone know of a list somewhere that names+shames all the games that currently use secuRom? You can find Starforce info easily enough, but not for secuRom that I've seen?

And in the general discussion about copy protection:

If you give people a machine that they can program on - then any copy protection can be got around, dongles/usb key/hardware ad-ons/ etc.

It's what makes these nasty copy protection methods (Starforce/secuRom etc) so pointless in effect.

In increasing cases they simply annoy the hell out of your legitmate customer base - and you risk loosing them all together ("yeah i remember last time I bought one of your games - I spent a week having PC problems then had to completely re-install my system - maybe next time I'll just get that cracked version and save myself the trouble?").

And it may be why these last few years we have seen a big push to move gaming away from the open PC enviroment to the consoles - as that is really the only way to ensure less piracy.

I wouldn't mind that in principle if the gaming companies wanted to give good value for money on console games(they are getting shorter all the time) and didn't automaticaly assume all console gamers were 12 years old and make their games more to that market(yes I know we have 18 age certificates.......but that doesn't mean these games are mature or even slightly clever for the most part ).

So I choose to stick and suffer with the PC - AAA might be losing it's money from me(nasty copy protection/graphics over content/'consolificiation' etc), but the PC still has the best collection/back catalogue of games, with the widest play styles and the indies are getting better all the time.

Just dont rush out to get the latest game as you never know what it will try to put on your PC - read the forums first etc.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by El_Cid

Oh and FM 2008 does come with secuRom - although it looks like SI may be heading towards a patch that removes it(eventualy?):

http://footballmanagerportal.co.uk/b...08-beta-patch/

That fairly normal nowadays.

FM08 is still a buggy PoS though. As everyone feared a lot of SI's time and effort was spent developing FMLive and it really is showing in FM08, I can't imagine another reason for it being so buggy after a year of basically updating the same game.

[Kuciwalker]

If you give people a machine that they can program on - then any copy protection can be got around, dongles/usb key/hardware ad-ons/ etc.

I'm not convinced this is the case, because it strikes me something like

The only copy protection that might be crack-resistent is if the executable incrementally decrypted (and re-encrypted) its code as necessary, and the encryption and decryption was sufficiently obfuscated and interleaved with normal program execution that it became essentially impossible to extract just the game code. That might come with a performance hit, but more importantly, you'd need a really fancy compiler.

could work, at least practically.

That's a much different approach than current copy protection, though.