For those of you that have heard of the new New "copy right" method, What do you thimk. And for those who have not, I'll explain. Lets say you get a new game, like it a lot, and burn a copy for a friend. Wour friend will have fun with it until he find's he can no longer hit his target or accelerate his car, ect... Thing's like this will drive a person crazy. And what causes them is what aperas to be random scratches on the purchased cd. When the game is run it will look for these scratches and if there not found it will activate a program (in the program) to couse the game, over time, to generate flaws.
Now you may ask yourself "why not just stop the game from running when the scratches are not found?". The reason for this is because the makers want you to get hooked. That way, when it stops working you will go and buy it.

P.S.
I think this site is great

Well I am glad you like this site. Lol, your first post is going to be moved to the gaming section since this copy protection will mostly be used by games. I htink it may be easy to circumvent, however. When it looks for the scratches, it will be looking for a signal tha tthe game is either legit or bootleg. The work around? Either modify the exe to not look for the scratches or simply create a program that sends to signal to the game that the scratches are, in fact, there, even though they really aren't.

Moved to gaming discusion

Just goes to show they will never give up the fight for piracy. I personaly dont like the idea of not being able to do backups of your own games so this is making that harder for legit buyers but like bangbang said i'm sure they can come up with a patch for when you reburn the game to tell it the scratch's are there. I wonder how many CD's are going to start this method of protection and if it will ever be introduced to audio CD for example the if the random scratch isnt present then the song must me on your computer or on a copied cd.

This is a very crappy solution. Because say I am one of those people that reformat about every 2 weeks or so because I need to backup everything. That means everytime I must re-install my game, which means in say 2 months my game will be completely useless and unplayable. So taht really screws the guy who buys the game, more than it does the person who burns the cd.

Also its called "fade" the scratches in the cd arent realy part of the tech involved in fade thats just there to tell if it is a copy once its found to be a copy the fade tech kicks in and thats when you will find your game unplayable. There are already patches out for both now heheheh

If I played a game burned from a friend and started to get "glitches" like that, I would more likely think it's the game that plays that badly and probably never buy it...

hehe that would be funny if it backfires and gets bads reviews because of people reviewing copied versions hehe It does seem like a weird approach to piracy to let you play the game but with defects

this idea stinks, most people will think the glitches are actually part of the game and spread their experience to their friends, they should've included a popup that says buy the game so this doesn't happen or something.

I mean if an average person copies the game from his friend and then notices the glitches, there's no chance in hell he's gonna pay 50 bux to buy the game, unless he is told the glitches are the result of his piracy.

btw, for no reason at all :whistle:.... does anyone know the list of all the games that have to date implemented this technique? anyone?

on another note, I had a not so legal version of Mafia, and on one of the missions the dude that was supposed to do something for me jsut didn't do it, was that a copy protection thing or was it an actual glitch or something? I don't want any support, it's just that if this idea is fairly new then how come Mafia, 1 year old game, has already implemented it?

sigh. Games, paying...meh. Free gaming. All the way

Well, when I think about it... I guess I can understand why they're doing this. I can't disagree at all with the new copyright methods.

I think that whatever those copy right ppl come up with, someone will always find a way to beat the system. Then the copy right people will just come up with somthing new. Around and around we go.

i cant really say that this is a bad idea or a good idea...depends on your viewpoint i guess...if you look at it from the viewpoint of the companies making the games, etc. they are losing money from piracy...but most people i know that download/copy stuff like this end up buying it anyway after playing/watching/listening to it...call it a try before you buy type of thing

I've noticed that as well. But overall they're losing more money from that than they are gaining.

last game i bought was tony hawk 3 right when it came out

My mother plays with copies at home and that has happened with quite a few of our games at home after we copied them... I for one HATE it! I didn't hear the end of it when the game started to fail. Plus then I would have to give up what I was playing with. It's more of a thing of hassle.

I also think it's useless to battle piracy. The only way to win out against piracy is if the companies make their prices fair. I mean, for those who d/l or buy it illegally, they do it because it's cheaper and they can have more games for the same amount of money. I mean, would you rather pay 30euros and get 6cd's worth of games or pay 30euros and get a single game? And if those who are doing all of this can manage to have one master copy somewhere and sell the copies for 5 a piece and the companies only manage to bring it out so that the shops can sell it at 30? That's silly. It's like with most food, it's the packaging that makes it so expensive. I think a simple cd with a nice case and cover is enough. And the planet also has enough garbage as it is, and truthfully, what do we all do with the boxes after we get the game? I for one throw it out. So it would be doing everyone a favor. The companies could save themselves the trouble of protecting themselves from piracy, people could have their original copy at a decent price, plus we save ourselves a little garbage on top of it.

Who knew it was so easy? But they insist on making it difficult and making more and more protections that just end up annoying people who would like to have a copy of their game.

I agree with most of what you say especialy the garbge thing (I hate those huge boxes....) I think this fade thing will get them alot of sales yes people will be angry that they cant copy it and yes 40-60 USD is waayyyy to much for a game. I mean they sell what like 2 million copies of the hits and at 50 USD thats 100 million dollars. Since it probably cost them 500,000-1,000,000 USD to make they are making out like bandits. they would sell alot more if they dropped the prices and yeah it would fight piracy too ! I think this fade combined with a price drop would make a huge impact. I also think they need to ditch the huge box like Linx said that right there would save tons of money too.

Also imagine the money they could save making all of those programs and developing their methods for protecting their software????? That could also take a decent bit of change off of that. It's an all round win.

I don't think that the companies would lose much money. And it's naïve to think that it's the programmers that get all the money. The major dinero gets sent up to the head honchos of it all. Most of them could also use a cut in pay anyway. Wouldn't kill them.

It is true, but if less money goes to the honchos, less money goes to the workers as well

like I said in the beginning, they should take a note from the MPAA and make the games more accessible and offer price breaks when they can. Give people a good enough chance to buy it legally and they will.

I think more than give price breaks in places like the US and such, the main distribution nations, they should simply allow the games to be easily distributed all around the world, without a huge increase of pricing. Keep it leveled. That way more people have access to it, more people would buy it too

Exactly, and I was giving examples of where they can cut the price. It's simple compared to the ongoing development of these annoying anti-piracy methods.

aye aye

all you need to circumvent it is a good no-CD patch !!

Doesnt work on fade unless the patch is specificaly made to remove it and there are some out there but even the larger patch groups are having problems with it...

i mean im from India, and the games here are pretty xpensive upto two 2grand (a little more than 50US$) per game. While thats not much in the US, it is a lot over here, specially considering that there are guyz selling pirated copies for 50bucks(1$) a piece, i mean come on wake up and smell the flowers, not many people here will buy unless you cut prices. Sure, the development costs may be high, but you can get more by sales in this method!

I think it is alright people trying to copy games is just stupid. they should just go and buy the game. What i do is wait intel it goes to $20 then i buy it. It's better that way.

personally i think a problem they should fix is making the games more worldwide available...outside of the US a lot of people download illegaly not only because of monetary reasons but because they simply have no other way to access the game or product.

Once the game company implements this new form of copy protection, it is just a matter of time and determination before someone cracks it by modifying the .exe or some other file. It will most likely stop the causual pirater who just copies a game and expects it to work. But those who know how to get around copy protection now, this new form will just be another thing to look for when pirating a game.

yeah, but prettly soon the casual pirater is gonna get tired scour the net and discover how to crack the game. Several years and 1000's of dollars on copy-protection research... gone!!

I am just waiting for the day we dont have Harddrives.
we just boot up and Log on to a Main frame. And for like $2 a month we can use MS Office and $2 a month to use other products.

I think that will be the day.

hmm, im sure that dya is pretty far off. i mean if a single mainframe went down, all PC's connected to it would crash. And that's impossible for laptops, especially when youre in places where you dont have wi-fi access.

EDIT : @ A_Man_918 : but it takes a LOOONG time to do down to 20$ and here in INdia it foes down to 500 Rs which equals 10$. But even then, some games like Halo are still 30$. And there are pretty easy ways to obtain it by *cough* unconventional methods, specially here.

Every protection method has its countermeasure. It's that simple. A software protection can be undone by some reverse engineering. It can take some time, but it's always possible. The only thing the tech world shouldn't have done, is make cd-burners public. But now it's already done, and nothing can stop piracy now...

well, i think youre wrong on that psYchotic. i mean CD burners are indispensible. Also, they are marketed by companies who dont make games and so dont care if games can be pirated as long as they get a good profit margin.

That's true, but I think the game industry would've had enough power to stop it from happening. I don't say it's all the fault of the companies which provide cd-burners. And of course they're indispensable, but that's because we're used to them now. Something like 20 years ago, you wouldn't say something like that. Anyway, let's get back to the protection topic.
Are sites like on the box.sk network legal? I won't name any url because I'm not allowed to, and I understand why, but is it so that the sites are not responsible because of some lousy statement that says they can't be held responsible for what is done with the content of their site? Does it mean that only the downloaders are responsible?
And is it legal to download a crack if you are a legal owner of a copy of a game? I'm not quite sure, because a crack is a modified version of the games executable, which would mean you didn't follow the copyright rules?

no, but there are some weird rules:-

In the EULA of most games,it says that the owner of the game can make one copy for his own purpose. But the companies do everything in their power to prevent this!!

No, the owners of the website can be held at fault. But bcuz there are so many, it is impossible to shut them all down.

Im not too sure bout the crack. I guess that if it is an exe that allows a back up CD to be created - not a real crack a bkup CD crack, then it is legal, but not for No CD patches. It is totally illegal to do this for console games however

I think if you download a no CD crack for a game you own I think that is legal (its TONS more convienent to just click an icon then to load a CD) As for CD burners being the problem.... I disagree I rarely burn anything I download most of the time I just extract the files do an install from the files then use a no CD crack.... I think the best protection would be this A person needs a CD key to install the game then once the game is almost done installing some files would need to be downloaded from the companies server (nothing huge just some small necesary file) If some one didnt have network access they could fill out the registration card and the company would send the needed file on CD... LOL would be a pain but it would cut down on piracy sort of like MS's WPA.

Edit:hmm I remember something from somewhere about a program needed a CD key then it downloaded another key from the companies web page... Maybe something like that for games would work ?

yeah but they would have work arounds with what you suggested and if it was that complicated i would probably just use the crack even if i did buy the product hehehe ... about the no cd crack i'm pretty sure its illegal to use if you own the game or not but cant say i'm 100% sure.

but MS, if theCy issued that on a reuqest CD, wouldnt that be available on the net too (pirated i mean)?

Could be but if it where locked to a single CD key it would be worthless to anyone else some one would need to have both CD's and need to be registered ? I know its the old chicken and egg thing all over lol

Yes, but if u entered the same serial & had the same file (obtained by some means) then it would work. Same problem again!

haha that is a very good idea by the companies.. not that I like it though..