What DRM is in Dominions 3?

[CthulhuDreams]

Basically it's CD-Key only. They are beating copy protection by

A) Designing a CD-Key generation algorithm that is fairly complex

B) Slowly adding more of the validation checks they originally designed to each subsequent version - you can think of this as the key generator having 20 'rules' and each patch has checked for an additional 'rule' so pirate keys that work with an earlier version don't work after being patched

C) 'Soft failing' for CD key checks that makes it very difficult to automate any testing

It is quite clever, but relies on the game being pretty niche and frequent patching to be effective. Overall a very 'user friendly' copy protection system that doesn't require aggressive DRM.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by CthulhuDreams

B) Slowly adding more of the validation checks they originally designed to each subsequent version - you can think of this as the key generator having 20 'rules' and each patch has checked for an additional 'rule' so pirate keys that work with an earlier version don't work after being patched

Not that I care one way or the other, but do you have any evidence for this? They do more checking each patch? Wouldn't have thought they'd bother.