It'll have to be crack able to be sold in the UK, thanks to the IP Bill...
Reverser laments crypto game protection, says wares dead after 2018
A top video-game cracker says cryptographic anti-reverse-engineering technology could put an end to the prolific rate of game piracy. The Chinese reverser, known affectionately as Bird Sister, Phoenix, or Fifi, has published a short blog noting that the encryption technology protecting the popular Just Cause 3 title. " …
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: re: Expect government back doors in games in future....
Who is the dumbass?
A (video game) cracker is someone who removes the copy protection of a video game, so lamers like you can copy it and play it for free (this may involved encrypting of the media, of the game itself and various other bits).
Encrypted game chatter is something totally different.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 14:36 GMT Dr. Mouse
Re: re: Expect government back doors in games in future....
A (video game) cracker is someone who removes the copy protection of a video game, so
lamers like you can copy it and play it for freethe legitimate owner is able to use it without the ridiculous restrictions put in place by the writersFTFY.
I have, on many occasions in the past, had to crack games that I legitimately own in order to use them in the way I want. For example, I cracked Quake 2 so I could run it without having the CD in the drive. Had I not, I would have ended up with unplayable game I paid good money for, simply because the CD had become scratched. I would also have had to find the CD every time I wanted to play it.
Things have moved on, of course, but there are still legitimate reasons to crack a game you own. Many games, for instance, now require an internet connection, so you have to crack it to play it on a laptop away from home.
Also, even if your original statement is true, most crackers don't do it so that people can play for free. They do it because they can, because it is a fun and interesting exercise for them.
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Friday 8th January 2016 10:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: re: Expect government back doors in games in future....
>even if your original statement is true, most crackers don't do it so that people can play for free. They do it because they can, because it is a fun and interesting exercise for them.
Agreed, I was being sarcastic with the previous comment.
I disagree with some of your arguments, and there is not much point discussing it.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 08:45 GMT Mage
Re: Good
Indeed, why doesn't she and the teams do something useful for humanity instead of wasting time pirating games? That only allows more people to waste time and deprives the people developing them. The cost to develop a game is extremely high compared to producing a book or music.
I'm 100% opposed to DRM, but this isn't the solution.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 09:52 GMT Mage
Re: Good
"Because as soon as the authentication server goes offline (company folds, title deleted, etc...) then you've lost the game."
Then is the time to break the DRM. Yes, DRM is stupid. But enabling "piracy" while the system is active is childish.
DRM actually is contrary to Copyright, as copyright is supposed to expire eventually on any work. DRM is evil.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 15:17 GMT SolidSquid
Re: Good
"Then is the time to break the DRM. Yes, DRM is stupid. But enabling "piracy" while the system is active is childish."
If you're working with an authentication server then, chances are, once the authentication server goes dead there's no way for you to work out what it was sending back. Listening in on the traffic between the game and the authentication server is a large part of bypassing it, so it really does need to be done while the system is still active. Also, as with the new Simcity game, there are a lot of single player games which use an authentication server and don't need to, and turning off the authentication is a way to play it if you don't have reliable/working internet all the time (someone who plays games on their laptop while travelling for example)
None of this justifies copyright infringement, but I can't really fault her with bypassing something which only hurts people who buy the game legitimately and risks the game going dark completely at some undefined point in the future
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Thursday 7th January 2016 12:04 GMT inmypjs
Re: Good
"Fighting the pirates is taking away resources away from developing other games which the rest of us can enjoy."
And beating the pirates means the rest of us have to pay full price to find out if we do or don't enjoy a game so developers will worry less about making enjoyable games and more about bribing reviewers.
CD Projekt Red knows if you make good games DRM is a waste of time.
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Friday 8th January 2016 03:07 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: Good
"And beating the pirates means the rest of us have to pay full price to find out if we do or don't enjoy a game"
And this is why DRM will eventually come back to bite them in the ass.
Unable try out a game before purchase? Money stays in pocket, or goes to help finance an Indie game writer on Patreon or Kickstarter.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 12:59 GMT dotdavid
Re: Good
"So she's extremely clever and I applaud her her skills, but I am cheering for the game manufacturers.
Fighting the pirates is taking away resources away from developing other games which the rest of us can enjoy."
So the game developers are extremely clever and I applaud their skills, but I am cheering for the game pirates.
Fighting the pirates is taking away resources from developing other games which the rest of us can enjoy. The sooner we all admit that DRM is counterproductive, being only an inconvenience for legitimate users, the sooner we can be done with one more legitimate excuse for software piracy.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:30 GMT Graham Bartlett
Re: Demos
On planets where normal sale-of-goods laws apply. If you buy a tin of beans from Tesco today for 30p, and then tomorrow you find they've got a special offer and the same beans are 20p, you don't get to take them back and re-buy them at the lower price. If you bought them, then you bought them.
If there was something fundamentally wrong with it, then of course you could return it for a refund. But if you're just trying it on, expect people to tell you fo f*ck off and stop being a dipsh*t.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:55 GMT Sam Liddicott
Re: Demos
It's not a matter of law, it's a matter of contract and negotiation with the seller and the buyer, and the rules imposed by the owner of the voluntary market place.
Many vendors in the world allow and openly publicise this practice - it is good for the vendor, because it means that the prospective buyer does not delay a purchase hoping for a sale soon, but can buy now and get the sale price later if there is one (and if they also remember).
It means the vendor might even sell-out and so not need to have the sale.
Also, if you can buy a game and get a refund if it turns out to be rubbish/boring/easy then you are more likely to take a risk on it - you only have your time to lose.
This strategy makes it easier to sell, and vendors who are confident in the quality and value of their goods can get much benefit as sales are easier.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 13:27 GMT foxyshadis
Re: Demos
"On planets where normal sale-of-goods laws apply. If you buy a tin of beans from Tesco today for 30p, and then tomorrow you find they've got a special offer and the same beans are 20p, you don't get to take them back and re-buy them at the lower price. If you bought them, then you bought them."
On what planet? Every Tesco I've set foot in will let you return anything but alcohol no questions asked, at which point you can walk back into the store and rebuy the same item. If the petrol and time is worth it to you then they aren't going to stop you. Some stores have more stringent return policies, but certainly not Tesco.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 20:14 GMT Shadow Systems
Re: Demos
Getting a refund on opened software? Not anywhere I've been in the last decade around here.
Go to any store that sells computer software & they invariably include the clause that opened software can only be exchanged for the same title if the purchased copy was physicly damaged when you opened it, otherwise they don't give refunds nor even store credit.
BestBuy, NewEgg, Target, Walmart, etc have all refused to accept opened software since long before I went blind ~6 years ago, and I doubt they've changed their policies since.
They claim it's to protect against folks buying it, taking it home, opening & copying it, then bringing it back as "defective", only to go home & play their "free copy". The companies have a point & it's a massive PITA should you get your supposedly "new & unopened" title home only to find out the hard way that the jerk whom bought it before you has already used the reg code / DLC codes / etc, and the store simply re-shrink-wrapped it without any clue.
So not sure where you live that allows the return & refund on opened software, but that's not been true in America for a very long time.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 08:34 GMT Turtle
A month.
"It kept popular title Dragon Age: Inquisition uncracked for about a month."
That's pretty good, but the most recent versions of Steinberg's digital audio workstation apps Cubase and Nuendo to have been cracked was v4 of each program, in 2008 - seven years ago. Of course, those apps use a usb dongle so it's not quite the same. (On all my systems the dongles have always worked completely transparently, even with three of them plugged in simultaneously. But that's a very large sum of money embodied in those little thumb-drive pieces of plastic.)
I recall one of the Steinberg forum mods saying that if the protection lasted a month it was considered a success, as that seemed to be long enough for significant numbers of "early adopters" to get frustrated and actually pay for the apps instead of waiting for a cracked version.
On the other hand, if a game can't be cracked, then one's ability to play the game would seem to be congruent with the life of the company that published the game: if the publisher goes under, you could be left without a means of installing and playing it. And with what AAA titles cost, that's a meaningful loss for a lot of people.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 10:24 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
Re: A month.
That's easy. Either insert the dongle in to the VM via the USB emulation facility - which generally works fine, or alternatively use hardware passthrough to expose the entire USB controller/subset of the ports to the VM. That will work reliably.
Note that if a passthrough is performed of the built in USB ports, or a multifunction adapter, rather than a single function adapter, the results may not be as expected.
Say there are six ports, and a PCI(-e) device list shows 00:1a.0, 00:1a.1, 00:1a.2, 00:1f.0,00:1f.1, and 00:1f.2 it might be expected that passing 00:1a to the VM will provide three ports. It doesn't necessarily work that way - it'll probably be either one or five ports, as each controller handles USB1,2 and 3+ all bundled up in the same set of resources.
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Friday 8th January 2016 00:29 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
Re: A month.
You don't - what was asked is how to add dongles to virtual machines, not how to migrate or do DR. VMWare is fancy enough that it'll attach a local USB device to a remote VM, which is certainly a neat trick. I've found Xen's USB support to be reasonably good, and KVM's to be a little less stable.
There are also remote USB over IP products, which could theoretically support fault tolerance. That's left as an exercise for the reader.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 09:18 GMT Tristan
Just works
I have solved the DRM problem by simply not buying any game which has any DRM. So I have the witcher 3, and Kerbal space program, but not much else.
I don't agree with the idea of a game publisher's flaky server deciding when or if I get to play the game today, and the game is useless as soon as that server goes for whatever reason.
So - DRM free or you aren't getting my money.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 10:29 GMT Jess--
Re: Just works
I would have no objection to drm in games IF...
the last action of the publisher before shutting down their auth servers was to release a patch that removed the drm from the game enabling people that have purchased the game to continue playing if they wish.
Yes it would mean that the game would then effectively be free for anyone that can get hold of a copy (torrents etc) but since the publisher would no longer be selling or supporting the game by that point they could not argue that this represented any lost sales (in fact the counter argument could be that this older "free" version may lead to purchases of a newer version of a game in the series)
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Just works
the last action of the publisher before shutting down their auth servers was to release a patch that removed the drm from the game
Good look getting them motivated to do that, when they've already taken and spent your money.
since the publisher would no longer be selling or supporting the game by that point they could not argue that this represented any lost sales (in fact the counter argument could be that this older "free" version may lead to purchases of a newer version of a game in the series)
And the counter-counter argument being that if a customer is satisfied with the older game, and can continue to play it, then they have less incentive to buy the newly released (yet remarkably similar) sequel to said game.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 12:49 GMT Amorous Cowherder
Re: Just works
"the last action of the publisher before shutting down their auth servers was to release a patch that removed the drm from the game enabling people that have purchased the game to continue playing if they wish."
That will never happen. The Abandonware and Retro scenes have plenty of cases where the ownership of some old product, sometimes upwards of 25 years old, is still held by some company and they've enforced their ownership by way of take down notices and in court summons in some extreme cases. Nintendo are particularly vicious in regard to their ownership. Nintendo software is one of the few systems that a lot of "legit" retro sites will not deal with as they know that the big N's lawyers will come down on them hard, and for most it's just a hobby sharing some naff old software no one wants anymore. Companies hold the rights just in case they can monetize it again in future. How many companies or individuals are are making money with old Spectrum software by releasing it through mobile phone emulators, etc.
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Friday 8th January 2016 08:13 GMT Dan 55
Re: Just works
The irony is (if it's that) is that Nintendo lock purchases to consoles, on the Wii and even on the Wii U where on every other system if you log in on another device you can re-download.
If your console breaks you lose the purchases unless you pay Nintendo to fix it, in which case they give you a reconditioned one and transfer the account to the new console. Their Wii to Wii U transfer might not transfer everything if the title was withdrawn from the Wii Shop. You are better off buying the disc version than a full price DRM download.
So they don't exactly do themselves any favours with DRM.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 15:22 GMT SolidSquid
Re: Just works
"I have solved the DRM problem by simply not buying any game which has any DRM. So I have the witcher 3, and Kerbal space program, but not much else"
Take a look at GOG.com, you can get a lot more than just those two and none of their games use DRM afaik. Even the installers can be just downloaded and stored locally if you like
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Thursday 7th January 2016 22:29 GMT RNixon
Re: Just works
There is not one single game on GOG that has DRM.
Every single game can have its installer downloaded (without a special client), sneakernetted to an internet-less PC, installed, and played.
There are some games that need a CD key for an online component (generally older titles) or require a login on the developer's server for multiplayer, but even those play just fine offline.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 09:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Cracking Vs game playing
I used to crack games many moons ago. The reason? It was more fun than playing them. I even got to read hidden messages inside the protections begging me to stop. Games/things will always get cracked because the challenge will always be there. It will still be pirated even if not fully cracked just like PS3 games.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 10:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cracking Vs game playing
If people want to crack games for the fun of it, then nothing to stop them. But then to show their skills, they only have to offer proof of cracking - not the entire game itself.
Dodgy analogy - I could prove that the lock on the vault of the local bank is insecure, by breaking in and taking a selfie with the dismantled lock. I don't have to return the following night with someone else so they can take a bunch of fivers as proof. (I think I know what I'm getting at...)
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Will be interesting to see what happens...
I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what happens to the games market if this actually comes true. If piracy was reduced to zero, or at least close enough to zero so as to no longer be statistically relevant (at least on AAA titles).
At that point I'd expect to see something like a 5%, perhaps up to 10% increase in sales, as a few of the previous people who would have just pirated, now buying the products instead. *
With the publishers finally realising that the ridiculous fugues they've been banding about over the last decade or more, around lost sales were wildly inaccurate. That the millions they've pored into DRM over the years, actually cost them more than the revenue lost due to piracy or people avoiding their games due to the over restrictive DRM itself.
* Most pirates in my experience buy the games they like at some point anyway, Steam sales etc. pirate out of a dislike of a specific DRM, i.e. online DRM requirement for a single player game etc. Or download the crack, to remove the DRM from a purchased game.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 15:33 GMT silent_count
Re: Will be interesting to see what happens...
Back when I had more time to play games, I used to make sure there was a working No-CD crack before I'd even consider buying a game (life's too short to spend it switching CDs for every damn program, just to pander to the publishers' paranoia).
So I'm not so sure, AC, that perfect DRM actually would increase sales, or whether there would be enough people like me who'd sooner find something else to spend their time on.
These days I buy off gog.com (all DRM free), or not at all.
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Friday 8th January 2016 03:20 GMT Captain DaFt
Re: Will be interesting to see what happens...
"At that point I'd expect to see something like a 5%, perhaps up to 10% increase in sales, as a few of the previous people who would have just pirated, now buying the products instead."
I'd expect the opposite. With the ability to play the game when and how you like scuppered, I'm sure many people will just look elsewhere.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:01 GMT Nuno trancoso
It will hold true if they keep locked in the "bragging rights" mentality. If they push past through that, you'll see them come up as a "community" writing actual frameworks and not "personal tools". Security did it, VX'ers are doing it, reverser's are the next logical step.
Moment you can rely on a framework to "auto-unwrap" anything known and that can be expanded as unknown comes into play, "protection" is a moot point.
p.s. i don't support piracy, it's just that i support DRM and anti-cheat|hack|crack shitty rootkit like software even less.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:19 GMT jake
Out of curiosity ...
Why the hell didn't this person, who obviously has ability, get a job that earns six figures (depending on jurisdiction, of course!). I mean really, cracking games? Does she honestly think she'll have a job after her own self-admitted criminal activity is effectively extinguished?
Curiosity is good ... Carry on.
Revealing the internals to the GreatUnwashed? Maybe not so much, if you want a career.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 12:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Out of curiosity ...
Most crackers it's not a job, they're very smart people who are need of a challenge and enjoy the kudos of the chase. They often trade grudging respectful comments with those who write the protection schemes. The protection writers can't be seen to be making public statements, unlike the reversers and crackers who often will be quite public in their comments.
By way of example, back in the day there was one very well known cracking group working on the Atari ST games, the group's head honcho worked for the Post Office as a delivery driver by day and a games protection cracker by night. He had a wife and family to support, working in the PO gave him an easy way to shift the titles and more importantly he was home early to a quiet house where he could work for a few hours on the latest games.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 11:21 GMT PassiveSmoking
Don't worry Fifi, the UK government amongst others are moving to make the encryption technology that protects such products from piracy illegal, or at least neutered to the point of uselessness, because terrorism. Their ignorance should ensure that legitimate uses of encryption such as protecting copyrighted works from the likes of you will cease, because as everybody knows if you're not a government then there are no legitimate uses for encryption.
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