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Sunday, December 11, 2005
The future is online
The christmas issue of PC Gamer had a comment about game companies switching from making PC games to making games for the new XBox, because there is less piracy for console games. Bittorrent statistics show over 1 million people have pirated Quake 4. Although counting each download as a "loss" of income is a bit unrealistic, even if just 10% of the downloaders would have bought the game instead of pirating it, that is serious money. It is easy to see how game company executives could prefer an environment without piracy.
But is moving to consoles the only way? Console games carry a bigger license fee, so they are either more expensive and sell less, or they have a smaller profit margin. Microsoft is losing $150 on each XBox 360 sold, and is making up for that with the game license fees. So the better plan would be to continue making PC games, but ones that can't be pirated.
How many copies of World of Warcraft got pirated? As far as I know, zero. Because copying the game disc wouldn't help you a bit without an account. You would need to generate a key code for WoW to make an account and play, and even if you managed that rather difficult task, you could always be found out and your account closed later. So expect to see more and more games, even single-player ones, which require online activation, or setting up an account to play. Obviously the game companies need to find a system that works better than Steam for Half-Life 2, because you don't want to scare away more paying customers than pirates. But online activation in principle should work a lot better than all other copy protection methods, because the program is on the server side, and thus much harder to hack.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:33 AM Permanent Link
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WoW piracy doesn't exist because it is *all* on the server - you merely have a data cache locally because streaming all the graphics wouldn't make sense..
Classic standalone programs run locally.. even with an activation that would be online, it's merely a program establishing a connection sending info and waiting for some back to unlock. This can be broken in a number of ways - there's already a lot of software working with online activation and most of them are available in pirated versions.
Network connections can be diverted and sniffed, code can be reversed and analyzed. Basically if the program calls home sending ABC and you can see its waiting for XYZ to come back before allowing you to do whatever, it's easy to design a XYZ feeder..
Even if matters get more complicated and the data is encrypted and the decryption keys has to come from the auth mechanism to work properly, you could possibly do it legally once, grab that key, traffic the whole thing to feed it automatically, then send that version to warez sites..
It's like a server's data security: do whatever you want, but if someone has physical access to the box forget about all security... Same with programs - if there's any way shape or form that something can run stand alone (no matter after how much authorization levels) it can and probably will get cracked.
So the middle ground is indeed Steam's method, which requires a connection at all times, even just start the darn thing. And yes, that's really annoying..
(For the record I'm DMCA compliant ;) The concepts of breaking software and reversing is really interesting, but I'm way too lazy to actually do some :P But I'm all for using a no-cd patch to a soft I legally own but don't want to get from my library each time I want to start it)
Classic standalone programs run locally.. even with an activation that would be online, it's merely a program establishing a connection sending info and waiting for some back to unlock. This can be broken in a number of ways - there's already a lot of software working with online activation and most of them are available in pirated versions.
Network connections can be diverted and sniffed, code can be reversed and analyzed. Basically if the program calls home sending ABC and you can see its waiting for XYZ to come back before allowing you to do whatever, it's easy to design a XYZ feeder..
Even if matters get more complicated and the data is encrypted and the decryption keys has to come from the auth mechanism to work properly, you could possibly do it legally once, grab that key, traffic the whole thing to feed it automatically, then send that version to warez sites..
It's like a server's data security: do whatever you want, but if someone has physical access to the box forget about all security... Same with programs - if there's any way shape or form that something can run stand alone (no matter after how much authorization levels) it can and probably will get cracked.
So the middle ground is indeed Steam's method, which requires a connection at all times, even just start the darn thing. And yes, that's really annoying..
(For the record I'm DMCA compliant ;) The concepts of breaking software and reversing is really interesting, but I'm way too lazy to actually do some :P But I'm all for using a no-cd patch to a soft I legally own but don't want to get from my library each time I want to start it)
# posted by 
: 11/12/05 17:54
: 11/12/05 17:54
I've been saying it... implementing features of MMORPGs that make them better business models and games will be the future.
On that note... you're not counting the hundres (if not thousands) of emulated WoW servers.
Anything saved on a PC of some sort will be pirated and moved. The music industry is a perfect example that the fight won't be won.
The key to still making your product financially viable is offering affordable solutions. Music has iTunes and single song downloads. It is helping a lot in the music industry.
When and if software companies start leveling lawsuits against piraters you will see a chunk of them look for legal alternatives. That is where the software companies have to develop their own "itunes" solution.
People are sick of overpaying for things because companies can't balance their budgets and stick to a profit making model.
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On that note... you're not counting the hundres (if not thousands) of emulated WoW servers.
Anything saved on a PC of some sort will be pirated and moved. The music industry is a perfect example that the fight won't be won.
The key to still making your product financially viable is offering affordable solutions. Music has iTunes and single song downloads. It is helping a lot in the music industry.
When and if software companies start leveling lawsuits against piraters you will see a chunk of them look for legal alternatives. That is where the software companies have to develop their own "itunes" solution.
People are sick of overpaying for things because companies can't balance their budgets and stick to a profit making model.
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