Finally, successful DRM?

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mr_zen256

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Most of you will already have heard about the invincible scorpian in Serious Sam 3: BFE. So, in that sense the DRM has worked exceedingly well. In addition, it appears that there has still been no fully working pirated version of Serious Sam 3 since its release on Nov 22nd.

Looks like whatever Croteam has implemented is working brilliantly! I havent seen any reports of legitimate users being burnt by the invincible scorpian. Even if the game is eventually cracked, Croteam have already won since currently the only way of playing the complete, working game is to purchase it and it is almost a MONTH after initial release. Well done!

Hopefully it doesnt mean that future versions of this type of DRM is easily cracked once the initial work has been done for this release.

Meanwhile, I shall go back to Steam and enjoy blowing shit up :)
 
just a matter of time before someone figures out how to get rid of that scorpion
 
eh, you can be sure a lot of pirates and grinning and saying "challenge accepted".

For myself, I'd like to see a version of that in the regular game, but only where it is scurrying around, not shooting and attacking you....
 
That is impressive to say the least. I'm wondering if there's anything interesting regarding this...
 
nothing new, there have been a few games that come out over the years with a new DRM and it does take a bit more time to crack it, but once cracked, the company is now screwed for all of that time and money they spent goes down the tubes!
 
Honestly if you can deter pirates for even two weeks after release you've won.
 
I don't see the point in pirating most games, especially ones from small devs.
 
Define successful.

One of the splinter cell games went something like 6 months before it was officially cracked by the scene groups (software only), although was cracked within weeks if you were prepared to do a bit of fiddling with your disc drive.

I guess we'll see, once it's cracked it will have no one downloading it right? Riiight. :rolleyes:
 
MrGuvernment said:
nothing new, there have been a few games that come out over the years with a new DRM and it does take a bit more time to crack it, but once cracked, the company is now screwed for all of that time and money they spent goes down the tubes!
Click to expand...

Yes because coding an invincible scorpion takes so much time and manpower :rolleyes:
 
My only guess is that it's hardcoded into the EXE file and the game itself.

You may remove or patch the anti-piracy/DRM DLL file(s) or even edit the 3D model data file(s), but so long as that it's in the EXE file itself, then there is no way to remove it for a while. It must detect patched DRM files to bypass it and activates the scorpion.

It's impressive and I'd prefer it over the "You can only install this software X amount of times" or "You have to be online continuously to use this software."

My only assumption is that whoever/whatever pirates do, they'd have to decompile the EXE file unless that too is encrypted.

It's a great deterrent to piracy. It'd be funny if Blizzard did this instead of requiring players to be online to play their games. Maybe add an invincible Zergling that oozes acid and one-hits kill anything or infinite Zerg rush if it detects the game was pirated. :D
 
Climber said:
Yes because coding an invincible scorpion takes so much time and manpower :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
It takes a good 3D artist about two weeks to go from concept art to finished model with textures and skeleton (longer if there's a dedicated texture artist or animator). It takes a 2D artist about a day to work up the concept art. It takes the coder about a minute to find and change the life value of the scorpion.

Honestly, it's still not much in the grand scheme of things. I'd rather see DRM like this than the rest that's out there.
 
Remember that the Scorpion is just a recycled asset, so really all they had to do was increase the scorpion's speed/life. But then there's all of the coding involved in detecting dlls that have been tampered with, which would obviously take a bit longer.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
It takes a good 3D artist about two weeks to go from concept art to finished model with textures and skeleton (longer if there's a dedicated texture artist or animator). It takes a 2D artist about a day to work up the concept art. It takes the coder about a minute to find and change the life value of the scorpion.

Honestly, it's still not much in the grand scheme of things. I'd rather see DRM like this than the rest that's out there.
Click to expand...

I know exactly what goes into it and your point may have some relevance if it wasn't already in the game.
 
mr_zen256 said:
Most of you will already have heard about the invincible scorpian in Serious Sam 3: BFE. So, in that sense the DRM has worked exceedingly well. In addition, it appears that there has still been no fully working pirated version of Serious Sam 3 since its release on Nov 22nd.

Looks like whatever Croteam has implemented is working brilliantly! I havent seen any reports of legitimate users being burnt by the invincible scorpian. Even if the game is eventually cracked, Croteam have already won since currently the only way of playing the complete, working game is to purchase it and it is almost a MONTH after initial release. Well done!

Hopefully it doesnt mean that future versions of this type of DRM is easily cracked once the initial work has been done for this release.

Meanwhile, I shall go back to Steam and enjoy blowing shit up :)
Click to expand...
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory went uncracked for over a year, it was kind of crazy. That was the first Starforce iteration, which was insanely hard to crack.
 
octoberasian said:
My only guess is that it's hardcoded into the EXE file and the game itself.

You may remove or patch the anti-piracy/DRM DLL file(s) or even edit the 3D model data file(s), but so long as that it's in the EXE file itself, then there is no way to remove it for a while. It must detect patched DRM files to bypass it and activates the scorpion.

It's impressive and I'd prefer it over the "You can only install this software X amount of times" or "You have to be online continuously to use this software."

My only assumption is that whoever/whatever pirates do, they'd have to decompile the EXE file unless that too is encrypted.

It's a great deterrent to piracy. It'd be funny if Blizzard did this instead of requiring players to be online to play their games. Maybe add an invincible Zergling that oozes acid and one-hits kill anything or infinite Zerg rush if it detects the game was pirated. :D
Click to expand...
are you just using words that sound good in your head :wtf:

Every drm is "hardcoded in the exe". That doesnt mean anything.
 
Since the majority of pirating occurs in the first few weeks, I'd say this was successful. (This is according to industry studies. And if the studies were lying or biased, they would have claimed that piracy never lets up as a game ages, so I am obliged to believe them.)

Now of course, we wait for them to release "Pirate Mode" as a togglable game feature where the scorpion hounds you through the entire game. Complete with a hook hand for your weapon viewmodels, of course.
 
djsb said:
(This is according to industry studies. And if the studies were lying or biased, they would have claimed that piracy never lets up as a game ages, so I am obliged to believe them.)
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Exactly what they WANT you to think, man.
 
I JUST CAME UP WITH IT!!!


This isn't DRM at all. It's a way of distributing a demo with all these pirates thinking they got something for free. Now that they are playing, they are hooked and may buy.

You get to play for a while, then the scorpion rips you a new one....................
 
I think it's great DRM. If any DRM can last about 1 month, or until the first major Sale Price reduction of the game as their (paid for) hype wines down then I would say it is a major win for the dev.

All a question of time. If it cost 10k to implement & arguably brings in JUST an extra 50k, then it is worthwhile at 5x the investment.
 
Haven't tried and I really don't care about this game. But the DRM approach sounded amazing. So, I had to youtube it and apparently you can easily kill it with a quick console command.

So much for that I guess.
 
So, you have to find a pirated copy of Serious Sam 3 if you want a modern PC game that's not too easy?

It sounds like a fun challenge to try to finish the game with an Evil Otto trailing you.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
It takes a good 3D artist about two weeks to go from concept art to finished model with textures and skeleton (longer if there's a dedicated texture artist or animator). It takes a 2D artist about a day to work up the concept art. It takes the coder about a minute to find and change the life value of the scorpion.

Honestly, it's still not much in the grand scheme of things. I'd rather see DRM like this than the rest that's out there.
Click to expand...

I know exactly what goes into it and your point may have some relevance if it wasn't already in the game.
 
Since some of you have no idea how coding works, here is sample code for this "DRM":

/*DRM CODE*/
if (lPirated){
obj scorp = new scorpion;
scorp.speed = 10000;
scorp.life = 100000000000;
}
/*END DRM CODE*/
 
There's definitely more to the DRM than just the invincible pink scorpian. The pirated copies suffer from regular crashes and freezing, not being able to progress past certain chapters etc.. All in all, it's been a huge success. If you are so inclined, you can read the comments on public trackers to get an idea of the issues people are having.. It's hilarious :cool:
 
mr_zen256 said:
Most of you will already have heard about the invincible scorpian in Serious Sam 3: BFE. So, in that sense the DRM has worked exceedingly well. In addition, it appears that there has still been no fully working pirated version of Serious Sam 3 since its release on Nov 22nd.

Looks like whatever Croteam has implemented is working brilliantly! I havent seen any reports of legitimate users being burnt by the invincible scorpian. Even if the game is eventually cracked, Croteam have already won since currently the only way of playing the complete, working game is to purchase it and it is almost a MONTH after initial release. Well done!

Hopefully it doesnt mean that future versions of this type of DRM is easily cracked once the initial work has been done for this release.

Meanwhile, I shall go back to Steam and enjoy blowing shit up :)
Click to expand...

You must not frequent sites in the know. SS3 has had a working crack since the 8th, and that's on public sites, not 0day.
 
YES! Amazing and new DRM!

Except similar 'in game changes' have been done since at least the C64 in the 1980s.

Everything is new, I guess...
 
jiminator said:
Since some of you have no idea how coding works, here is sample code for this "DRM":

/*DRM CODE*/
if (lPirated){
obj scorp = new scorpion;
scorp.speed = 10000;
scorp.life = 100000000000;
}
/*END DRM CODE*/
Click to expand...

Now explain how 'lPirated' is determined.
 
I imagine that they have stealthy checks to see if steam is active and if a user is signed on. The same function calls are probably used regards achievement and high score logic. Anyway I am glad it has worked as well as it has.
 
Climber said:
Yes because coding an invincible scorpion takes so much time and manpower :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Climber said:
I know exactly what goes into it and your point may have some relevance if it wasn't already in the game.
Click to expand...

could take a few days to do that, but then the code to check for if it is to be activated, either way time and money were spent to do it.

Now it is a good way of doing it, but it would eventually be beaten, it was the same as some games back that started to affect game performance if it was a pirated copy, they got around it eventually.
 
Drakenfeng said:
Can't have one of these threads without mentioning Earthbound, which used this concept of DRM many years ago

http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/05/earthbounds-copy-protection/

"So one final layer of protection was added to prevent pirates from fully enjoying the game – the game will freeze your game during the final battle, delete all your save games, and then reset."
Click to expand...

But that is letting the pirate go too far. It should only be a few levels to get them hooked.
 
reminds me of the somewhat legendary spyro piracy checks
 
The concept of altering gameplay mechanics in a pirated version is not new. However, it is not often it takes nearly a month (still counting) for crackers to circumvent the DRM. Regardless of what an earlier poster said about there being working pirated versions, I have yet to see evidence of a fully functional pirated copy in the wild.

As I recall, a working crack for Arkham Asylum was released shortly after the intial pirate release. So, I would definitely call Croteams anti-piracy measures are a triumph - huge success.
 
mr_zen256 said:
The concept of altering gameplay mechanics in a pirated version is not new. However, it is not often it takes nearly a month (still counting) for crackers to circumvent the DRM. Regardless of what an earlier poster said about there being working pirated versions, I have yet to see evidence of a fully functional pirated copy in the wild.

As I recall, a working crack for Arkham Asylum was released shortly after the intial pirate release. So, I would definitely call Croteams anti-piracy measures are a triumph - huge success.
Click to expand...

Except it isn't , it delayed the release maybe a week or so but there are fully working pirated copies out and about. You can't call it a "triumph" when its impact is marginal , the idea in its-self is clever but it won't stop highly talented hackers from figuring out ways to bypass it.

Its been debated countless times on this board , across the internet and during public conferences .. DRM ultimately doesn't do what its created to do and ends up making it harder for paying customers to get at the content they pay for.

No one person/company has developed a great way to deal with it ...yet.
 
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Godmachine said:
Its been debated countless times on this board , across the internet and during public conferences .. DRM ultimately doesn't do what its created to do and ends up making it harder for paying customers to get at the content they pay for.
Click to expand...

Have there been any instances yet of the DRM spawning the arachnoid in legit owners' games?
 
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