Mirror's edge, looks promising. - by Fragony
june gloom on 28/1/2009 at 18:16
And then there's Titan Quest.
The_Raven on 28/1/2009 at 20:10
I always found that approach to copy protection to be ill-advised. Let's face it, even though publishers and devs hate to admit it, false positives are bound to happen with any form of copy protection. With this approach, how the hell are you going to know that something isn't working the way it should?
Sulphur on 28/1/2009 at 20:28
Anybody remember Ultima VII's copy protection? Where you had to answer NPC questions based on stuff from the manual? It was similar in that it let you play if you got the answers wrong, but had the benefit of being utterly hilarious.
N'Al on 28/1/2009 at 20:41
In what way was it hilarious, exactly?
Sulphur on 28/1/2009 at 20:56
You'd be strolling along, thinking everything's fine and what was the point of those questions, and you'd come across an NPC.
"So, let's ask this fine fellow what his name, job, and bye is," you'd say to yourself and double-click on him, only to find out that the conversation goes something like this:
NPC: Buttered hamsters limn in the undergrowth, my turnip? There is no hoe in virtue, guard and wise the flow, shortly!
And then he'd amble away, leaving you feeling rather dazed. You'd try another NPC, only to get the same result, and then it dawns on you that the copy protection makes the game seem like you're trapped in a loony bin.
Basically, the game selected random words from its speech files and strung them together for any NPC encounter you had after that. It was hilarious and effective for its time, you basically just had to re-answer the questions to get the game going again.
N'Al on 28/1/2009 at 21:13
Heh, not bad.
The problem, I find, with this and Mirror Edge's type of copy protection, though, is that it still requires the user to make the connection between the crippled gameplay and it being due to the game being pirated. What I mean is, if someone were to play a pirated copy of ME, but wouldn't understand that the reduced movement speed is down to piracy protection, he'd think the game was a buggy piece of shit. It's nowhere near as severe as with Titan Quest's crash-to-desktop procedure (which left the game with a very bad reputation), but it can still happen.
Maybe combine the gameplay crippling with some sort of notification that the game has been found to have been pirated, plus a gentle nudge that the user should please buy the game (e.g. a link to the game's website), or something?
The_Raven on 28/1/2009 at 22:25
I'd be fine with that. Unfortunately, the main reason for this approach is to make it harder for pirates to properly test cracks. This, of course, means that the end user shouldn't be informed in any manner when the copy protection check fails.
N'Al on 28/1/2009 at 22:35
That's a good point.
And I also realise that a notification wouldn't exactly convince that many pirates to actually buy the game - some would still be better than none, though. But it most definitely would invalidate any Titan Quest style rumours, which is what made me think of it in the first place.
gunsmoke on 29/1/2009 at 01:20
I never heard of this Titan Quest ctd. Wow. I am actually interested in purchasing it, and have been following it for years. I'll have to do some looking around for some articles.
june gloom on 29/1/2009 at 02:02
The Titan Quest ctd is a direct result of piracy. Basically the pirated version uses an earlier, buggy, crash-prone version of the .exe. The resulting shitstorm of warez kiddies crying about how shitty the game was ended up killing sales.
