Continued on Duffs post

[Crypton]

Rather than spam the other thread off topic, I quoted and brought a new thread for discussion. Anyways, here is some of my pointless debate on what I think about companies using "protection" for their games ect..

I think it is sad that someone who has forked out there hard earned money has to disable and even delete/remove programs that they have every right to install on thier PC. Is it even legal for another program to interfere with another program? it's a form of mallicious attack in what StaForce and such are doing.

I agree, what is even the most sad thing of all, is how the companies waste their time, resources and money trying to "defend" their product when they know it will be cracked, and they know with groups around and reversers getting very good with latest protections, most times the max wait for a "fix" is a week, unless it's a very new protection which needs to be figured out. (Such as when Starforce 3 was introduced)

Then they inflate the cost of the game in order to "get money back" off the protection they are implementing into the game. Honestly, I think if they released a game with no protection on it, they would not see any drop in sales, and to be honest I have always had this thought in my head though I am against warez, my thoughts..

1: If the person does not have money to buy the game, they are going to download it reguardless and use some fix to play it. If they really want it that is.

2: If they are going to buy it, they aleady made their mind up before the game was released anyways, so its either ya, im buying it, or no don't want it.

3: It is like MP3's, if people want the music, anyone, does not matter who they are will buy the CD if they really like the music, not because they are "supporting" the companies, record labels, band ect.., but because they want the stuff you get with the cd, such as covers, ect..

4: Like MP3's if they are not going to buy it, they either made their mind up before the retail release, either because of money, or becuase they don't like the band, songs, ect.. Therefore, they were never going to buy it anyways, so there is not sale loss there.

5: based on "statistics" and we all know those are not accurate since they are taken off of a select number of population in areas that normally produce large sales. If you look, sales have not dropped on games nor on music. In fact, the sales have increased, not alot but they have. Though companies claim they have "lost" money, but if they are losin money, I think they should look internally at what they are doing and what they are buying in order to produce.

6: When a company decides to make a title, they automatically as wrong as it is, base their "expected" sales on statistics. They immediately say, ok 2 years ago we made this, the next year we made this, then this year we made this, so next year we will make this much more... Now, the problem is, if they do not hit that mark, oh it's because of them sites that contain fixes for our protected software, then people like us get labeled as the cause for their "so called" loss in sales.

If they just quit worrying about "protecting" their games, they would have more money for themself (like they don't make enough) because they will no longer have to maintain paid licenses for using stuff like SecuROM.

It is exactly like the issue with MPAA/RIAA hitting P2P, people use stuff like IPFilters ect.., which honestly, it may help a bit, but it is a false sense of security...

Main reason for "loss of money" or sales as they call it, they have to pay more and more for the "latest" version of SafeDisc, SecuROM ecy... and for what? so a week later it is defeated and they have something to blame for them not selling a ton of games, they also seem to forget, though there is billions of people in the world, not everyone is going to buy every game they push out the door, and companies such as UBISoft and EA are known for producing ALOT of games...

Who has the money to to really buy every game that comes out? And then include the other companies that produce games of the same genre that are also of good quality.

People will often choose 1 maybe 2 and not buy anything else. They forget that not everyone is rich and $50 USD a pop is not cheap for everyone, a select few might have loads of cash to throw around, grats if you do, but for the majority of us, we have to stick with 1 or 2 titles every 6 months, maybe even a year or 2...

Lucky me, I have accounts with many companies from hardware to software and get alot of things free, My Geforce SLI set I just got a few days ago was sent from one of my contacts and well, as soon as I get a motherboard I can use it with lol, I might let you know how it runs.

Anyways, debate? What do you think, I maybe wrong completly, but according to my "sources" im pretty much on the head of the nail if you get my drift :P

There are alot of other factors involved of course, but most importantly is protection vs. companies so called "loss of sales" Also take into consideration that the economy (at least in the U.S.) is not exactly thriving...

[DuffMan]

Some nice points there ;)

The main use for these protections I think you will find is to prevent "casual copying", that is people just burning these such games and doing as they please with them.

[Crypton]

ya, I know and the point is it really does not prevent it, any game to date can be copied, the protection does not prevent it. It does however prevent playing the game once installed, but then there is the "fixes" which can be found tons of places, this being one of them. So really, why waste the time and money for something that is not preventing the use of a game?

I think if they spent that little extra bit of cash to make a better game or add more into a game maybe they could not do becuase of budget, maybe the non use of protection will allow them to budget that extra money into something better for the game. Many may not agree, but I think protection is pointless. Waste of money and something to complain about when it fails as it always does.

I mean yeah, we get people that are like omg, I can't play this game from a copy. Might stop those few, but for the rest of us net junkies we know better.

I remember back when I was learning to reverse things, before things such as Armadillo, AsPack ect.. were used heavily, sure it was easy to reverse, CD protection was almost nothing, a couple NOP's and bingo, though even today, most protections try to detour you from doing that, wrapping the exe or even placing the exe as some encoded file that a sorta exe loader unpacks or reads the file as an executable. SafeDisc was a good example when it came equipped with the .exe and .icd along with dplayerx.dll, then later versions they tried to make it harder by placing the .icd inside the exe, was only a matter of find the beginning of the .icd and dumping it in order to remake the .exe without its wrapper.

Though I am pretty amazed at the new protections, StarForce 3 for one is a good one, but still, easily defeated in the cheapest way.

Thing is, there is truth behind developing programs/games or any software. The "harder" you try to make a protection, or more "sophisticated" if you will, the more ways you create to defeate it because the best protections are always the most simple.

You may make it a little harder to figure out, but your not doing anything but wasting effort. I think companies have gone beyond trying to prevent casual copying, more like war on pirating.

The prevent casual copying is easy without the need for SecuROM/SafeDisc ect.. CD-Checks, and Media type checking (CD-R/RW/DVD-R/RW) and AsPack or Armadillo is your basic prevention of "Casual Copying"

SecuROM/SafeDisc/StarForce 3 ect.. are all examples of "we do not want any copy able to work .

While at the same time making it hard for people "honest people" making backups of their CD's, hey things happen, CD's do not last forever especially when they are used alot. Backups are the best thing to happen to gaming since it enabled us to play a backup without risking our $50 CD.

Not only that, but these new protections grind away our hardware just to read the CD and check if its the real disc or not is a chore in itself and I think companies instead of caring if they are destroying peoples CD Drives could care less, why? Because they are making money from it, and CD-Rom/DVD-Rom companies don't care because they know we will be purchasing another from them. When protections get to the point that they impact even new drives to where they wear them out at a rate that kills them while under warranty, then I think will be the time someone finally says, hey enough is enough, chill with this it is costing us money now.

Sitting here with nothing to do, I decided to run some tests here at home, over 4 different computers with different drives, I set my heat monitors on each, long story short, CD's which contained SecuROM and Starforce 3 compared to SafeDisc increased the heat on the drive 10-15 degrees, while that may not seem like alot, more heat on any hardware = increased wear and tear.

Point, us the consumer are the ones getting the shaft out of all this, the companies are like babies who are greedy and just want more, or, sorta like Baseball players when they cry because 5mil a year is not enough. As if they are going to spend all the money they have already? :)

[DuffMan]

Though I am pretty amazed at the new protections, StarForce 3 for one is a good one, but still, easily defeated in the cheapest way.

StarForce is a program in itself, the only reason it is more difficult than the traditional protections such as SafeDisc and SecuRom is the fact that it installs drivers as part of the game and protection installation, and that is just wrong, as its these drivers that disable your legally installed programs.

[Crypton]

yep I know, reason for my bashing these companies.

I find it funny how they can be allowed to install things in the background without the user even knowing, take SecuROM for example. According to the readme.rtf of snowblind, SecuROM will create a file called securom7_00.dat, but nowhere does it say that UAService7.exe will be running, nor even running when the game is not running either. After a reboot the program continues to run. To remove, of course you need to stop the service and terminate the process, delete the exe and remove the registry entry, if you simply remove the reg entry, it will place itself back in the registry...

These type of low level system drivers that install without the user having a choice should be just as illegal as pirate software. Where will this go in the future? Complete lockdown of a users system? Or even destruction of a users windows install on the even a emulation or "fix" is detected? (given the fix went wrong of couse) or what about a debugger?