How does one stop piracy?

[cardtrick]

Am I the only one who frequently pirates things they already own? I don't want piracy stopped, at least not until actual developers learn to provide the convenience and ease of use that pirates do.

I get no-CD cracks for every game I buy. I also frequently pirate copies to keep on my storage drive as backups, since I've gotten sick of CDs getting scratched or unreadable (I've bought 3 copies of Fallout and 2 of Arcanum, and I have no intention of buying more). For a variety of games, pirated versions strip out buggy and resource-intensive copy protection like Starforce, which of course makes the game run better. Pirates also often bundle the games with patches. If I ever reinstall NWN2, I'll download a pirated version rather than install from my CD, since it will most likely come with the patches all ready to be installed.

Similarly, even though I own two copies of Windows XP, when I reinstall it these days I use a pirated version that includes Service Pack 2, all incremental updates after that up to a certain point (releases are monthly), strips out most of the bloat (including MSN Messenger and other useless crap), comes pre-installed with various useful software, has an improved installation process requiring minimal interaction, and has no problems at all with Genuine Advantage or whatever MS's anti-piracy thing is. It's just far more convenient.

I buy my games and software because I think it's the right thing to do, not because I get any benefit from it. Developers (or, more likely, publishers) need to provide the same, or preferably better, benefits as crackers do. One company that does a decent job of this is Valve -- these days, the only games for which I install the version I actually bought are the ones that come from Steam, since they install with all the latest patches already included and with minimal fuss, and Steam automatically lets you know when new patches come out. (And no, you don't need to keep Steam connected to the Internet to run single-player games . . . I'm not sure where that rumor came from.)

 

[Naked Ninja]

You do it like this :

http://www.instantaction.com/

Piracy is unstoppable while the pirate has access to your software. They can decompile it and rip out the protection. This is a fact. All you can do there is make it as difficult as possible, which is the equivalent of slowing them down a little.

So the answer is simple. Don't give them your software. In the future we won't get full games to keep. We will get dumb clients (if even that), software which can interpret commands from the server but is unable to play the game without that server.

The technology is finally getting to the stage where we can keep the bulk of the logic sealed off from the public. All it needs is a high speed internet connection. The exact same thing which pwns devs now will save them.

Unfortunately, this means if the company dies we can't play our games. Which sucks for the consumer, but they accept it with MMOs, the mindset will have a little resistance for a while before becoming standard.

This is closer than you think. GG is launching InstantAction soon, from the press release :

InstantAction will also launch a Game Development Fund aimed at fostering a new generation of game development for the internet. Introducing new technology which allows graphically rich, networked games to run in popular web browsers with no download installation, InstantAction.com will enable easy access to singleplayer and multiplayer games with core-oriented mechanics and high-end visuals.

I've highlighted the bits that are going to pwn pirates. The future is going to be a very different gaming landscape.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

 

[Shannow]

Kill Al Gore, the head vampire. The internet will die with him.

 

[cardtrick]

That looks kind of interesting. I just signed up for the Beta.

 

[cardtrick]

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

Indeed. You hardly see anyone with a cell phone these days.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Is this InstantAction (C) (R) TM SM technology coming out the same time the PHANTOM hits the shelves?

 

[Ratty]

So the answer is simple. Don't give them your software. In the future we won't get full games to keep. We will get dumb clients (if even that), software which can interpret commands from the server but is unable to play the game without that server.

The technology is finally getting to the stage where we can keep the bulk of the logic sealed off from the public. All it needs is a high speed internet connection. The exact same thing which pwns devs now will save them.

Unfortunately, this means if the company dies we can't play our games. Which sucks for the consumer, but they accept it with MMOs, the mindset will have a little resistance for a while before becoming standard.

If that means games will be marketed as services rather than products and if they are priced accordingly (something like $20 a month for unlimited access to a package that includes a couple of dozen games - kind of like gaming variant of cable TV), then I won't object to such a model. Otherwise, they can go fuck themselves. I'll simply boycott the stupid thing, and I doubt I'll be the only one. As for the pirates, I'm willing to bet an obscene amount of money that they'll quickly find ways to beat the system. Hell, they'll probably consider it a challenge and enjoy the ride.

 

[WalterKinde]

So Basicaly Naked Ninja is in the camp of those who see software as a service but at the same time wants to sell it to you as a product?
Meaning if you lose said software whether in a harddrive crash etc its generally believed you buy another copy if its a service then you should be able to download it as many times as you want to any computer that you want once you've paid.
Its all about control and not really those evil pirates like i said, they decide whats gong on YOUR computer, and like was noted if the company goes belly up you are up shit creek without a paddle.
Kills small time capitalism as well or charity, depending on how the system is no resale for you and no giving away that game if its tied to you , whens the last time anyone has tried to sell a game purchased on Steam? Valve comes down hard on you for that.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

Indeed. You hardly see anyone with a cell phone these days.

Wat?

 

[cardtrick]

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

Indeed. You hardly see anyone with a cell phone these days.

Wat?

The pricing model is possibly different in Eastern Europe, so the analogy may not have meant anything to you.

In the US, you pay a one-time fee to buy a cell phone (sometimes hundreds of dollars, for something like the immensely popular iPhone). However, the new phone you own is completely useless unless you also pay for a monthly subscription to a provider and/or individual per-use fees to send text messages, etc. As far as I can tell, that's exactly like your car example, but it certainly hasn't impacted the popularity of cell phones.

 

[Halenthal]

@cardtrick

Same here, every game I own, the first thing I do is check a pirate forum for not only the nocd cracks, but also the latest patches. Those pirate types are fast with finding out when games have patches released, and the forum I watch is a great one-stop-shopping place to find out if any of the games I own have had patches released, and if so there's a crack for it.

I don't go so far as to download a copy of the game itself for backup, I'm just really careful to never use the CD again after installing the game. If I uninstall it and want to install it again later, I don't mind digging up the CD for that. I play three, maybe four different games a day, and that kind of CD swapping would quickly scratch up my discs. So...nocd for the win.

 

[Naked Ninja]

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

Sure sure. Exactly how many people play MMO's, knowing their characters and progress is stored on the companies servers? Like I said, there will be token resistance, but if all games move to that type of platform it will crumble. Basically, the gamers will have to go where the games are. I sincerely doubt you all will give up gaming.

And hell, think about it, no download. You can play the demo of anything, anytime, on any PC, whenever. Hows that for awareness generation?

Is this InstantAction (C) (R) TM SM technology coming out the same time the PHANTOM hits the shelves?

It is in closed beta at the moment. A number of developers are currently making the first batch of games on the engine (which means it is up and working). GG's own Legions (successor to Tribes) will be headlining on IA. Its the jetpack-shooter you see on their advert video.

As for the pirates, I'm willing to bet an obscene amount of money that they'll quickly find ways to beat the system. Hell, they'll probably consider it a challenge and enjoy the ride.

That would be quite the trick, cracking a game you can't access to decompile. You're making the mistake of thinking pirates are smarter than devs. They aren't. But the way the situation has been laid out devs have been fighting from a position of incredible weakness. It's like fighting a tank with a fork. The trick isn't to fight harder, it's to change the situation to eliminate that inequity. This way actually reverses the situation. Pirates currently win easily because they have total access to the code. They will find it nigh impossible once they have no access whatsoever.

 

[Ratty]

That would be quite the trick, cracking a game you can't access to decompile. You're making the mistake of thinking pirates are smarter than devs. They aren't. But the way the situation has been laid out devs have been fighting from a position of incredible weakness. It's like fighting a tank with a fork. The trick isn't to fight harder, it's to change the game to eliminate that inequity. This way actually reverses the situation. Pirates currently win easily because they have total access to the code. They will find it nigh impossible once they have no access whatsoever.

I can think of one obvious course of action - steal the server. It may seem like an impossible task, until you consider that bigger feats were accomplished, like theft of release candidates or even game source code. Unless they intend to keep every single copy of the server in a maximum-security military bunker, I doubt they can indefinitely prevent leaks accomplished through infiltration, social engineering or simple carelessness. I can already see pirates sneaking into archives or server rooms under the cover of the night, silent like predators stalking their prey. They will be more than pirates - they will be ninja pirates!

 

[Azarkon]

NWN 2 & Diablo II have patches, but that doesn't stop piracy...

Because they're not content patches. Gamecopyworld and sites like it won't host anything that can't be reduced to a cracked exe file or trainer, essentially. That effectively limits them to hosting bug fix patches and no-CD cracks. For actual content releases, you'll have to go to torrent sites, and if you look at those, you'll notice that while very popular games (ie NWN) have content packs released for them by dedicated pirates, they're usually quite behind schedule. So, effectively, you might get a content pack a month or so after everyone else has it, if you go the pirate route. That's great - if the content patches are sporadic. But if the devs are dedicated to providing a stream of content post-release, you'll be compelled to buy the game or miss out on what everyone else gets (not to mention the pirates themselves will probably become annoyed at having to crack each individual content pack).

It works especially well for indie games. Look at Dominions 3, for example - you can easily find the torrent for the game, but you'll be hard pressed to find the content patches.

It's very much possible, it's just that resulting experience tends to be inferior to the legitimate product.

And that's what stops piracy.

Ultimately, to confront this problem, we can either go the route of greater security (online checks, hardware locks, etc.), or we can go the route of transforming games into services. Pirates can easily crack games, but they can't, fundamentally, crack services. All they can do is try and mimick the service, which usually doesn't work because, well, it takes money to do so professionally. That's why MMOs, and other games that follow the model of providing a service rather than a piece of software, works well against piracy.

Consequently, I see the AAA game industry moving in two directions (web-games are in their own category; their economic model is very different): consoles, which provide greater hardware-enforced security (which is still crackable, but not by the average joe), and service-oriented games, which include MMOs but are not limited to them. For example, you could make a single-player player game that relies on the service idea - just make it so that all the content is stored server-side, so the player has to connect to your server in order to play. Of course, to do this in a non-intrusive way that is appealing to players, while not excluding those without net-access, isn't so simple. But I believe it can be done, and Guild Wars is a prototypical example of how.

 

[Azarkon]

So Basicaly Naked Ninja is in the camp of those who see software as a service but at the same time wants to sell it to you as a product?
Meaning if you lose said software whether in a harddrive crash etc its generally believed you buy another copy if its a service then you should be able to download it as many times as you want to any computer that you want once you've paid.
Its all about control and not really those evil pirates like i said, they decide whats gong on YOUR computer, and like was noted if the company goes belly up you are up shit creek without a paddle.
Kills small time capitalism as well or charity, depending on how the system is no resale for you and no giving away that game if its tied to you , whens the last time anyone has tried to sell a game purchased on Steam? Valve comes down hard on you for that.

I think software development must ultimately become a service if it's to survive. The technology is, as Naked Ninja said, getting to the point where it's possible. What remains to be done is the social conditioning and infrastructural changes required to accept this mode of commerce.

I believe that this idea will hit big when a major game developer figures out the simple fact that if you're going to require that people go online to access your game, you had better adopt a service-oriented model. Simply forcing people to access complete games on servers won't work - it's too product-oriented and people will just recognize the ploy for what it is. Pirates, likewise, will also be able to just release your game if they could ever get ahold of a leaked version. But, if your game is one where the content is continuously being updated and improved (ala an actual service), then there's no reason why people won't buy into the model. You could then even release the initial game "free" (or for a very small fee) to get people hooked.

It'll be just like Cable TV. You pay a monthly fee and get access to a service that, for example, might host a dozen or so AAA games that are continuously being developed and updated, just like MMOs. The infrastructural modification required to develop such a game - where the initial costs are made up for over a period of time, is not yet in place, so publishers are still fundamentally afraid of dumping money into a service, rather than a product. But they'll change their mind, or they'll move to some other industry, like consoles.

 

[Gnidrologist]

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

Indeed. You hardly see anyone with a cell phone these days.

Wat?

The pricing model is possibly different in Eastern Europe, so the analogy may not have meant anything to you.

In the US, you pay a one-time fee to buy a cell phone (sometimes hundreds of dollars, for something like the immensely popular iPhone). However, the new phone you own is completely useless unless you also pay for a monthly subscription to a provider and/or individual per-use fees to send text messages, etc. As far as I can tell, that's exactly like your car example, but it certainly hasn't impacted the popularity of cell phones.

Sorry, but this was not good analogy at all. What do you think eastern europeans have each their own trasnmitting towers all around the land? :D Of course we pay montly fee to the provider of the services.
Just like we pay our rents for the living quarters or electricity bills.
Maybe my analogy wasn't that slick, but the point was, there is big brother watching your every action and interfering every time he wants. Just to check, you know. It has no similarities with ypu paying your montly bills for services provided.

I doubt there will be many people ready to pay for sutch products. It's like buying a car and being able to drive it only when you receive permission to start your engine from some satelite and the keep receiving step-by-step clearences every time you want tu turn left or right. That kind of ''services'' pisses most people off and rightly so.

Sure sure. Exactly how many people play MMO's, knowing their characters and progress is stored on the companies servers?

Erm.. what. Is this is really some kind of ''wow'' (no pun intended) realisation for many MMO players? If that's a fact then average MMO player is even more retarded than i thought. I mean, how one can not logically ponder out that the very reason their stats and progression doesn't go away, when they log out, is because they're stored on the remote server? :facepalm:

Like I said, there will be token resistance, but if all games move to that type of platform it will crumble.

More like vice versa. There's really not mutch to comment. Your naiveness is sometimes astounding.

And hell, think about it, no download. You can play the demo of anything, anytime, on any PC, whenever. Hows that for awareness generation?

And exactly how techincally you can play the game whose copy is only located on the remote computer, but not on your's? Doesn't it include some uuber alien techonolgy, that would become available after 100 years at best? I'm not trying to troll you here, i'm really curious.

 

[vrok]

Because there is a download. While the game is loading it downloads an .exe and some other stuff to your temp folder that will ask network permission from your firewall before you can launch the game. Just tried it today.

 

[cardtrick]

Sorry, but this was not good analogy at all. What do you think eastern europeans have each their own trasnmitting towers all around the land? :D Of course we pay montly fee to the provider of the services.
Just like we pay our rents for the living quarters or electricity bills.
Maybe my analogy wasn't that slick, but the point was, there is big brother watching your every action and interfering every time he wants. Just to check, you know. It has no similarities with ypu paying your montly bills for services provided.

Again, exactly like cell phones, which also keep track of your location at all times (how many crimes and disappearances get solved by triangulating cell phone signals?). Anyway, I don't really see how the Instant Action system is much different than things like cell phones, electrical utilities, or music services like the new Napster (with which you pay a monthly subscription giving you access to unlimited music, which you lose if you stop subscribing). These kind of services are plenty popular. I don't think people are as fixated on the idea of "personal" property as you seem to believe. (For the record, I personally dislike the idea and agree with you, and would never use something like Napster -- I want to buy CDs or pay for DRM-free tracks from iTunes, and I intend to continue purchasing and keeping games. I like collecting things. Still, I signed up for the Instant Action beta out of curiosity.)

Oh, and of course I didn't think you guys all had your own cell phone towers, but things like pre-paid cell phones or pay-per-minute cell phones are much more popular in some regions outside the US (like in the UK), and if one of those was the dominant pricing model where you live then my analogy wouldn't have made sense.

 

[WalterKinde]

Gaming as a service sounds all nice and dandy but most corporations want to have their cake and eat it too, its a service but you pay for it like its a product aka a game you actually bought.
The mention of online mmo's like guildwars etc is a valid point, but considering most people can except when an mmo goes belly up (its the nature of the beast) even when they bitch at the company that released it.
Will gamers as a whole except because Game X is no longer profitable for Publisher Y the servers are shutting down and you will no longer be able to run your single player offline game ever again?
Imagine if that had been the case for Fallout or any of the classic games listed here on the codex.
We have seen it happen in the online multimedia world, virgin records and google stopped their video/music store service leaving customers in the lurch with useless video/audio files that require authentication of a server thats no longer there, then there was the whole major league baseball online video service as well that invalidated peoples video collections.

 

[denizsi]

InstantAction will also launch a Game Development Fund aimed at fostering a new generation of game development for the internet. Introducing new technology which allows graphically rich, networked games to run in popular web browsers with no download installation, InstantAction.com will enable easy access to singleplayer and multiplayer games with core-oriented mechanics and high-end visuals.

I've highlighted the bits that are going to pwn pirates. The future is going to be a very different gaming landscape.

I've highlighted the bits that are going to dumb games down even further. The future is going to be a very dumb gaming landscape.

 

[Fez]

The solution: everyone who thinks of games is put to death instantly. Kill them all, God will recognize his own.

 

[inwoker]

The future is going to be a very dumb.

fixed

 

[Azarkon]

Gaming as a service sounds all nice and dandy but most corporations want to have their cake and eat it too, its a service but you pay for it like its a product aka a game you actually bought.
The mention of online mmo's like guildwars etc is a valid point, but considering most people can except when an mmo goes belly up (its the nature of the beast) even when they bitch at the company that released it.
Will gamers as a whole except because Game X is no longer profitable for Publisher Y the servers are shutting down and you will no longer be able to run your single player offline game ever again?
Imagine if that had been the case for Fallout or any of the classic games listed here on the codex.
We have seen it happen in the online multimedia world, virgin records and google stopped their video/music store service leaving customers in the lurch with useless video/audio files that require authentication of a server thats no longer there, then there was the whole major league baseball online video service as well that invalidated peoples video collections.

That just means a company has to make a guarantee to its customers that if it ever goes belly up, the customers will have offline access to the last version of the game. Not a very difficult guarantee to make.

 

[Gnidrologist]

snip

Ok, without eleborating on every aspect of the issue you brought up, it seems to me that cellphones are really a bit different beast where you live.
I know people can be tracked down using the singnal of cell phone, but it's a totally irrelevant issue in this case.
It hasn't yet appeared to me, that our local business establishement uses some kind of tech, that limits our use of it's functions. I pay my montly bill acording to how mutch i've been talking via that phone and that's it. And if i don't want the particular provider, i can switch to another without my phone being somehow physically affected.

Being reliable on remote server and it's admins to use the product, you have actually *bought* is completely different thing. I can use my physicall cellphone in the any way i want even i loose the trust of my service provider.