dominions copy protection

Saber Cherry · #1 October 13th, 2003, 07:41 PM

I've lost a few CD keys, and it was really a pain. Now I always write them on the game CD... but in general, if a game requires key, I think it should be marked on the original CD (not the jewel case or box).

Any "activation" ala Windows would prevent me from buying any software (except Windows... sigh). If I were to release a game, I would probably allow patches to be downloaded for free, but require a key to be entered for the patch to be installed. That way, keys could be revoked in the future (if some were found to be massively duped), but there would be no Online BS to mess with (patches could be mirrored, etc). This would require big keys, with so many possiblities that if somebody cracked the keygen, any random new valid key generated would have a statistically zero chance of matching an existing customer's key - in other words, a duplicated key means that somebody gave his key to someone else. And if a flawed, crackable keygen was used, the only people to suffer would be the people that chose the keygen.

There are no perfect systems, but if you can make it take more than $39 worth of work to run the game illegally - without ever harming legit customers - the level of piracy will be insignificant. And BTW, I think requiring a CD in the drive to play constitutes "harm"

-Cherry

Pocus · #2 October 13th, 2003, 07:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mortifer:
Pocus, I dont know about these things but.....if you say: major patches. Well arent the major patches what those warez ppl need? I guess major patch means v1.1, v1.2 etc. Am I right?

What is a incremental patch anyways?

sure you can play with only major patches. By major, I mean the ones released by Stardock, that are available y regular download. But Stardock, almost weekly, release incremental subpatches, which are only available thru their utility (witch a check on the cdkey). Once in a while, they release a 'summary' patch, which cover all the tweak dones for some weeks/months.

I understand that they release these big patches to not piss off customers, but this is what permit pirates to get updates, which are then disseminated on the internet.

DominionsFan · #3 October 13th, 2003, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pocus:

quote:
Originally posted by Mortifer:
Pocus, I dont know about these things but.....if you say: major patches. Well arent the major patches what those warez ppl need? I guess major patch means v1.1, v1.2 etc. Am I right?

What is a incremental patch anyways?

sure you can play with only major patches. By major, I mean the ones released by Stardock, that are available y regular download. But Stardock, almost weekly, release incremental subpatches, which are only available thru their utility (witch a check on the cdkey). Once in a while, they release a 'summary' patch, which cover all the tweak dones for some weeks/months.

I understand that they release these big patches to not piss off customers, but this is what permit pirates to get updates, which are then disseminated on the internet.

No one cares about 'little patches'.
All major patches are on the net for Galciv..

If you ask me there is no perfect protection against crackers, and propably never will be. Sadly we must live with this. Always.

[ October 13, 2003, 19:46: Message edited by: DominionsFAN ]

LordArioch · #4 October 13th, 2003, 09:26 PM

The harder you make a game to play illegally, the harder people will work to break through your anti-piracy setup.
It's probably best not to try, because all trying does is waste trouble and usually make things more annoying for people who bought the game, while just providing more challenging practice to the software pirates.

They're pretty through too...I know people that know about that sort of thing...and I'm pretty sure there was even a warez Version of Dominions I. Although it's really sad if anybody got that...
Traitors to Illwinter! Destroy them all!

Gandalf Parker · #5 October 13th, 2003, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordArioch:
The harder you make a game to play illegally, the harder people will work to break through your anti-piracy setup.
It's probably best not to try, because all trying does is waste trouble and usually make things more annoying for people who bought the game, while just providing more challenging practice to the software pirates.

They're pretty through too...I know people that know about that sort of thing...and I'm pretty sure there was even a warez Version of Dominions I. Although it's really sad if anybody got that...
Traitors to Illwinter! Destroy them all!

Most of them arent efforts to stop the pirates. Its efforts to stop the copiers. Casual copys by good buddies are the big target. Pirates are just a side game.

LordArioch · #6 October 13th, 2003, 09:56 PM

Yeah...foolish me. I read down to your post after posting that...that does make a certain amount of sense too. But depending on how causual they are it really doesnt take much to stop casual copiers.
Cd-check requirements are especially annoying...they dont really stop anybody with a cd burner and they require actually keeping the cd accesible.

PvK · #7 October 13th, 2003, 10:12 PM

Hmm. It's too bad though to not be able to, say, play a LAN game with several computers using one CD-key.

The network host thing is a good solution for network games. Doesn't work for single-player. However, you can check whether more than one user is using the host network at the same time, and then deactivate that key.

Ah well.

PvK