Copy Protection: The rant

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Netrat33

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 6, 2004
Messages
4,894
Now this isn't a post about saying "get rid of them" this is more of a rant of "Start doing more QA (quality assurance) on your copy-protections!"

Recently on a couple of games LEGALLY bought, there have been some issues with it's copy protection:

We all know the Steam and Half Life 2 issue that has been beaten to death. Short and sweet: if it's going to have this form, it should run right away that day, no hickups. Especially for a top teir game. Don't like this form of it, but like I said: BEATEN!

Alice: owned two copies of the game (one used and one new) After installing a new game with possibly the same copy protection (safedisc?) It basically renders Alice to crash at startup. Alice also isn't really supported anymore by tech support. You gotta get a no-cd patch. Come on...If you are going to still sell the game at bestbuy, you need to still support the game and update the protection so it doesn't get affected by an new game.

Cold Fear: Buy it on DVD, Same kind of error Alice gives. It's the copy protection which you will see on Cold Fear forums. Solution: Tech support has to basically give you a no-cd patch to get the game work. I believe they even recalled teh game from stores temporarily until they fix it. Did no one test this out to make sure it works on multiple machine setups?!

Painkiller Gold Editon: Excited to finally get the game. Was expecting it on dvd but it came on 6 cds...Ok..little let down but I wont let that stop the game experience. Please enter 19 digit code in box. ...Looking...Looking...Looking. They fuckng forgot to PACKAGE the freakin serial number!! What is going on?! And yes, this is more than just isolated because there are actually POSTS from other people who had this same problem. I had to call tech support and they issued me a new one. Thank god it wasn't a "headache" (scan in your copies to prove you have it) but lordy!

This has been my rant.
 
the only copy protection i dont like atm is starforce

it affects your hardware and does NOT uninstall itself when you remove the game that installed it
 
I like them all, none have ever given me any trouble. Sure Securom runs as a service but that can be disabled through the controls and it gives me no problems.

I hope they get better, oooh I would love it if there was one that would uninstall windows if you ran a pirate version (of course during installation it would ask you to agree with the EULA which would protect them from lawsuits).

Heheh, I love when people complain about protections...
 
The really annoying one is when you have a disc that has the intenional errors on it. These disc are REALLY sensitive to scratches. I have Baldur's Gate 2. The disc managed to get scratched (due to moving house) after I'd played approximately 1 room of the game. My bloke is in a cage, Imoen busts me out, and then I thought I'd leave it until I'd moved house that weekend. It got scratched (careless I know), but the whole game installs. The whole of the data part of the disc works...but it moans about it not being an original. :(
 
ColinR said:
The really annoying one is when you have a disc that has the intenional errors on it. These disc are REALLY sensitive to scratches. I have Baldur's Gate 2. The disc managed to get scratched (due to moving house) after I'd played approximately 1 room of the game. My bloke is in a cage, Imoen busts me out, and then I thought I'd leave it until I'd moved house that weekend. It got scratched (careless I know), but the whole game installs. The whole of the data part of the disc works...but it moans about it not being an original. :(
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Have you tried one of those disc cleaners or something really simple like using white toothpaste to clean the scratch? It should help clean up the issue.
 
I was suprised when I went to a local LAN in the KC area that there were so many "kids" (under 21) there that had pirate copies of games. Most of them had really pimped out rigs or atleast attempted so and obviously had money to put into them. But then wouldn't drop 20-50 bones on the games to play. I think the last game I "borrowed" was almost 3 years ago. I guess I figured out I don't mind paying the people for their hard work on the products I enjoy spending my time with. It's not even a case of it being "easier" it's just the right thing to do. Maybe you come around and notice these things. One of my issues with copyrights is with The Sims 2. I think I screwed up registering the game now I can't get onto "The Exchange" for the neat goodies there. I'd have to do the whole "picture taking" thing yada yada.

Translation: Read the reviews, read some posts, and buy what you think you'll like. I can't complain with 95% of my PC game purchases.
 
|MaguS| said:
I like them all, none have ever given me any trouble. Sure Securom runs as a service but that can be disabled through the controls and it gives me no problems.

I hope they get better, oooh I would love it if there was one that would uninstall windows if you ran a pirate version (of course during installation it would ask you to agree with the EULA which would protect them from lawsuits).

Heheh, I love when people complain about protections...
Click to expand...

Just as long as they REALLY tested out the copy protection and were sure it was a pirated copy :) I could care less too
 
I'm with you on the rant. Not so much on the old and outdated stuff, although it SHOULD continue to work for a good long time or be updateable if it's good. But the ammount of new copy protection that renders the game unplayable or is highly incompatible is jsut stupid.
 
Heh. Raz just reminded me of the OLD school copy protection. Any remember the good ol dos days of protection :D


Please open your manual to page 14, paragraph 4, 8th line, 16th word.
 
Ryland said:
Have you tried one of those disc cleaners or something really simple like using white toothpaste to clean the scratch? It should help clean up the issue.
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I've tried the disc cleaner, but what's this about white toothpaste? Elaborate please.
 
reminds me of the time I bought UT2K3 the first day it came out and they forgot my freekin CD KEY, I still dont have one to this day. I have since stopped paying for games for the most part.
 
I still like UT200X methods of copy protection. Implement protection, cause it to make the game to not install or run right. Deploy a patch 2 weeks later which allows you to run the game without the CD. All is well..........Brilliant!
 
Ryland said:
Have you tried one of those disc cleaners or something really simple like using white toothpaste to clean the scratch? It should help clean up the issue.
Click to expand...

What I found that really works well is liquid car wax. Stuff works awesome at filling/removing/buffing out scratches and abrasions. As for th toothpaste, I have tried that as well and it did help but still caused intermittent errors.
 
Well I paid £35 for a game I haven't played (plus £20 for the expansion disc), so if I can fix it up with toothpaste, I will.

Does it need to be the abrasive polishing kind, or just any kind of toothpaste?
 
Brasso.....works great.

I have used the repair wheels and they remove it as well
but brasso is only $3 a can and will hast for yrs.

Rub HARD center to outside as you rotate the disk.
wait to haze and wipe off...
nice, shiny and just like new.

Sparks
 
Do NOT use the stuff with baking soda. Just regular toothpaste. You use it as a superfine abrasive to buff the scratches out. It doesn't work very well unless the scratch is VERY fine. From my experience at least.
 
Grimmda said:
I was suprised when I went to a local LAN in the KC area that there were so many "kids" (under 21) there that had pirate copies of games.
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That happens at a lot of LANs, at least in my experience.

I personally don't have a lot of money to buy a ton of games (2 kids and a wife tend to do that to you), so I can't play a lot of games they play (HL2 and CS:S, for example). Then they play CoD, plus expansions. If i bought all those, it would be another 75-100 bux...
 
|MaguS| said:
I like them all, none have ever given me any trouble. Sure Securom runs as a service but that can be disabled through the controls and it gives me no problems.

I hope they get better, oooh I would love it if there was one that would uninstall windows if you ran a pirate version (of course during installation it would ask you to agree with the EULA which would protect them from lawsuits).

Heheh, I love when people complain about protections...
Click to expand...

EULA's like that wouldn't hold up, since you don't accept it until AFTER you buy the game and open it, then you can no longer return it.



I hate copy protection.

The way I do it is basically I don't rush out and buy the new game at stores, the only times I do that is for one I MUST have on release day. For most games i'll wait weeks/month to pass or so and then I'll get them online, via ebay, etc.

Then i'll play them, beat it, then trade it/sell it online, saves me a ton of money and it's perfectly legal.

However it's a legal right to be able to back-up your software, which these games make you not able to do.

Aswell as requiring you to keep the cd in the drive.

I Find it hillarious that as a legal paying customer that PAYS for a game ends up getting the shaft on copy protection while the actual "gasp" pirates will easily d/l a game and play with 0 problems.

copy protection simply does not work. It ends up being a pain for the retail customers, i'd wager that if a game had no copy protection it would still sell as much as if it did, if not more.

Pirates are going to pirate games, it's what they do, they aren't going to stop it because of a cd protection they easily get around.
 
Why not get the best of both worlds. The first thing I do after buying a game is run off an image of it, and store it on my server, then put the cd's back in the box and store the box where it can't get damaged. Now I can mount the image over my network to install my games, and use nocd's to play witht he cd's in the drive.

No chance of having damaged cd's, considering I tend to use the stacking method of storing cd's I use frequently, and your games always work.
 
Pirates are going to pirate games, it's what they do, they aren't going to stop it because of a cd protection they easily get around.
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Copy protection isn't targeted at "hardcore" pirates; its aim is to prevent Jimmy Joe at school from burning a copy of a game he bought and giving that copy to Reggie Ray at school the next day.
 
neeyo said:
Copy protection isn't targeted at "hardcore" pirates; its aim is to prevent Jimmy Joe at school from burning a copy of a game he bought and giving that copy to Reggie Ray at school the next day.
Click to expand...

Then that fails because Reggie ray no longer needs to have it burned but instead simply goes to his latest p2p or warez store and downloads it.

A lot of pirates simply d/l the games these days, no cd involved with it, let alone the actual retail game.

One of the main things cd protection was stopping were the pirates who would buy a game, take it home and burn a copy, then return the game. However these days almost all of the stores no longer will take back opened software so that doesn't work for a lot of people anymore.
 
I have had few problems with most copy protection, but I **** hate starforce. I can't get Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (DVD copy) to run on my computer because I only have a DVD burner! Basically the tech guys told be to get a cheap DVD ROM...
 
Gotta love the advisory on the box, too. "Notice: This game contains technology intended to prevent copying that may conflict with some CD-RW, DVD-RW, and virtual drives."

"Some". That's helpful. In short "we're not going to tell you which, because we can't be bothered to find out what drives are incompatible, so just take the risk anyway and be incapable of returning our game when it turns out this copy protect causes a conflict with your drive. You know... because you openned it."

Talk about a kick in the balls though. I pick up the LCE, have been looking forward to the game since it was first announced, had the thing pre-ordered for months, and now I need to drop another 20 bucks for hardware I shouldn't need. *nods* This piracy prevention thing is terriffic. Oh, I know people who haven't payed can't play yet, and honestly, I don't care. They could play it all they want. Whether they play or not isn't going to determine whether they pay or not.

One thing is for sure. You can bet I won't be picking up anymore games that use Starforce from now on. From my perspective, copy protection hurts sales. Can I prove it? I was going to buy Trackmania Sunrise after playing the demo. After my experience with Splinter Cell I decided not to throw the money away when I found out TM uses Starforce. One sale = gone.
 
gwu168 said:
I have had few problems with most copy protection, but I **** hate starforce. I can't get Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (DVD copy) to run on my computer because I only have a DVD burner! Basically the tech guys told be to get a cheap DVD ROM...
Click to expand...

Heh. I've got a Plextor DVD burner, and I managed to get the special edition of Chaos Theory to work on my system. Of course, I had to uninstall a copy of Nero. THAT pissed the living hell out of me. I burn CDs of pictures I take with my digital camera for my mom and family. Lot easier to hand/mail them a CD than a big stack of photographs. So, in order to play Splinter Cell I have to give up the ability to do that despite it being 100% legal? Bull-Shit.. And of course, nothing on the box says that.....nor much mention of anything in the EULA aside from a very generic mention of protection. No mention of how it does things like install multiple device drivers on your system, or how the copy protection will require the uninstallation of specific software regardless of it's use.......

I at least respect Valve for being up front with their protection methods for HL2, which is why I made the decision not to purchase it (and NO I DID NOT FREAKING DOWNLOAD OR STEAL THE GAME!). Ubi did not give me that option, and their underhandedness in dealing with this has soured me on any of their future products.
 
I have a feeling Starforce is the reason I cannot get the GTR demo to run on my computer. And there are tons of others with the same problem. Copy protections that give you hell for having optical disc drives are taking things too far.
 
Copy protection has never been an issue for me, excepting (maybe) one of the Half-Life addons that I didn't need to buy in the first place since Valve released in on Steam.

The thing I *hate* are CD requirements for cheap games. I just loaded 150+ games for my mother-in-law and some require the CD to be in the drive to play. Scrabble, Life, $10 cheapness. I don't trust her opening the CD drive, much less inserting a CD and possibly dealing with autorun. Hell she can't even keep the taskbar in the same place. She's a mad clicker to be sure. :p
 
Netrat33 said:
Heh. Raz just reminded me of the OLD school copy protection. Any remember the good ol dos days of protection :D


Please open your manual to page 14, paragraph 4, 8th line, 16th word.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall one of the Bard's Tale titles having some freakishly convoluted copy protection involving a wheel of some sort :confused:
 
Netrat33 said:
Heh. Raz just reminded me of the OLD school copy protection. Any remember the good ol dos days of protection :D


Please open your manual to page 14, paragraph 4, 8th line, 16th word.
Click to expand...

The funniest one I remeber is Eye of the Beholder. It did not ask you about it until you went to the second level. Darksun also did that. It always made borrowing a friends copy fun. I remember kids at school photo coping the Dune 2 manual so they could play it.

I just loved all the SSI AD&D copy protection. I think I have like half a dozen decoder wheels.
 
Sib said:
The funniest one I remeber is Eye of the Beholder. It did not ask you about it until you went to the second level. Darksun also did that. It always made borrowing a friends copy fun. I remember kids at school photo coping the Dune 2 manual so they could play it.

I just loved all the SSI AD&D copy protection. I think I have like half a dozen decoder wheels.
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Oh my god I used to LOVE Darksun! still have the disks actually :) But I don't remember it having that copy protection. Been years though.

I remember also just trying to guess what it might be "the, and, wizard, robot" whatever the game subject was :)

Starforce copy protection. Don't know anything about it, but I did notice splinter cell's little "warning" and thought it was scary. I own both a dvd rom and dvd burner. Would suck if it didn't work because I have both. I am "lucky" i don't have problems, but I'm sure at some point I'll be back complaining. ;)
 
ECM said:
I seem to recall one of the Bard's Tale titles having some freakishly convoluted copy protection involving a wheel of some sort :confused:
Click to expand...

BT3, 3 ring wheel
 
Netrat33 said:
Heh. Raz just reminded me of the OLD school copy protection. Any remember the good ol dos days of protection :D


Please open your manual to page 14, paragraph 4, 8th line, 16th word.
Click to expand...

hah forget that, that ones easy, I still have the original copy of out of this world for pc, it requies you to take out this circular cardboard disk with 2 layers. When you start the game, it shows you a bunch of symbols that you have to match up on the cardboard disks, omg what a pain in the ass.. we got it easy with current games, so stop your bitching (original poster) it could be a lot worse..
 
Techx said:
hah forget that, that ones easy, I still have the original copy of out of this world for pc, it requies you to take out this circular cardboard disk with 2 layers. When you start the game, it shows you a bunch of symbols that you have to match up on the cardboard disks, omg what a pain in the ass.. we got it easy with current games, so stop your bitching (original poster) it could be a lot worse..
Click to expand...


um...the trip down memory lane was just for fun.
My post was about poor testing of how they implement copy protection and my experience.
I might have simply read your last line a little "negative"
 
I have had numerous problems with copyright protection keeping me from playing games I paid for.. I have a way of dealing with it..

I return the game.. Whether the store allows for it or not.. Call credit card company and dispute the charge.. I do this truthfuly also.. I claim the product in question was defective and is in the possession of the retailer.. Which it is, if it refuses to run on my computer because the copyright software just can't get along with nero, or my dvd burner, or any other legitimate hardware, software.. At EB games I try to return it.. When they say no, I toss the box behind the counter and leave the store.. Dispute cc charges and eb or whoever, takes issue, but the cc company always ends up seeing it my way.. They have the 3 times I've done it..

Returned POP warrior within, and sands of time, and farcry this way.. Learned lesson, I no longer buy Ubi soft games.. Too bad too, they make some damn good games..

Never had a problem with any of the Unreal or Quake based products not working on my comp due to copy protection....
 
I have 3 gaming PCs in my house. So obviously I'm often buying 3 copies of the same game so my friends and I can all play Online from my house. The problem is, my friends are idiots, not to mention fucking grab-asses. They don't bother to take care of the CDs for my games, so I make images...that is if the bullshit copy protection will let me. Teaching my friends to use Daemon tools (2 of them know by heart) is alot easier IMO than teaching them to not be grab-asses and return my shit to its proper place.

Last I checked this isn't soviet Russia, you're supposed to be running the software, not the other way around.
 
Yeah, that's what starting to get under my skin about these copy protect schemes, I'm all for protecting your Intellectual property by the way, but, lately I'm becoming frustrated with the approaches taken. The whole "you have emulation software installed" thing just is pissing me off to no end.

I feel like it is insulting our intelligence to go about it just like that, no shit I have clone cd installed so i can back up all the damn games i used to have to constantly reshuffle in and out of the drive to play it sometimes as many as 4-6 cd switches and what's funny about that is I didn't mind it too much until the constant swtching started to take its toll on the physical cd it self, when I wanted to play a different game at one sitting. Well, over time constantly doing that is guaranteed to give you some scratches on some odd disk/s.

The only game I even have that is not store bought is a copy of original age of empires and the rise to rome expansion that came out long time ago, if i remeber correctly that was in fact my first pc game and got me hooked on buying pc games.. I have absolutely no problem paying retail for my pc games, as I consider it one of my hobbies no less, collecting older and new pc games, much like some people who collect as many dvd movies or cd's of music do.

What really bothers me in the nutshell is I feel like I'm told now by game companies/publishers/developers whathaveyou what kinds of programs I can/am allowed to even have in the first place on my computer to even install and play their games. Grrrr!
 
It's illeagle to bypass copy protection. It's legal to make one copy of a game you own, for backup purposes. So in this case you have to break a law to excercise your rights under the law. Seem broken to anyone else?

 
On fixing scrached disc's.

I had a gouge on the FarCry copy that came with my video card. Got the run around from BFG and the maker of the game. Decided, WTH, and tried to fix it my self. I took some 1500grit wet sand paper and lightly buffed the disc until the gouge was gone. The disc is dull, but now it reads.
 
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