Microsoft, Blizzard Crack Down On Piracy, Cheating 150
Microsoft has confirmed that they've been wielding the banhammer lately over modifications to the Xbox 360 which allow players to run pirated games. Xbox Live's Major Nelson said the action would also void the warranty on the offending console, and that Microsoft will "continue to employ and bolster anti-piracy security measures to counter piracy in the gaming industry and improve security in the Xbox LIVE community." Meanwhile, Blizzard dealt with 350,000 of their own problem users on Battle.net, saying simply that they wouldn't tolerate cheating. This is likely one of many steps to clean up the system before it gets revamped for use with StarCraft II.
Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be in the minority here, but both Microsofts and Blizzards views on piracy and cheating have been very clear to me for quite some time, and haven't drastically change as of late.
Microsofts die-hard attitude towards modded 360s is actually quite understandable. If I'm not mistaken, 360 games aren't areacoded, and there's really no huge homebrew-scene for it, so the only thing modchips are good for are "backups", which - let's face it - are an excuse to run pirated games...
Simple (Score:1, Insightful)
Xboxs cost more to produce than they sell for so they only make money off games. They have to defend game sales or go out of business. Blizzard has to defend their service because it costs them money every month to maintain and the cheats are freeloading off the paying customers. Neither case is about defending freedoms and both companies are well within their rights.
Re:So Microsoft... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a bit naive in this area also. However, I guess that it's similar to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). They could do a checksum or generate a hash on the binaries and on the hardware also. Anything that does not "match" could be flagged.
If the mod chip is in the hardware should it not be next to impossible for Microsoft to detect it?
I'm not sure that generating a checksum on hardware is all that different to doing it for software.
I don't have a Wii, but I am guessing (for the purpose of this reasoning) that it connects to the internet and checks 'things'. So, I don't really see it being "impossible" for MS to check for (sit behind a firewall and, yes, maybe...)
You don't say? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Meanwhile, Blizzard dealt with 350,000 of their own problem users on Battle.net, saying simply that they wouldn't tolerate cheating."
The b.net that I play on sure seems to tolerate cheating. Or at least it has for a LONG time.
Diablo 1 had Auto PK, Auto Revive (and then PK again of course), Town kill, dupes, and I believe there was even a god mode.
Diablo 2 had Way Point PK traps. Now it has Map Hack, dupes, auto aim, far cast, pick-it, chicken (auto exit), dupes, Town-Portal PK triggers, town kill, and more dupes! It's nearly impossible to play in a public environment on their public server. Most solo in passworded games, or perhaps with a friend or two... almost never with strangers.
I was one of a hand full of Diablo 2 players who were NOT included in this recent ban, and I must say that it was great to see it come. It was vindicating to see so many cheaters get what they deserved. It would be wonderful if they continued to enforce it (though they never have in the past after mass bannings, so I see no reason why this time will be different).
But for them to say that "they simply [do not] tolerate cheating." Well that's a bit of a stretch people! In fact, I thought it was convenient how the bannings came so near to the release of WotLK. Suddenly there was 350,000 gamers who needed a new staple to play.
-hps
Re:Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how Blizzard would earn more money going after cheaters? It probably cost them more money to look thru replays and such. Sure if someone is permanently banned they may buy the game again, but except in that scenario? For WoW I can get it since it's a subscription game.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it destroys the value of the online community. What good would being able to play over the Internet be if your opponents could cheat and get away with it? Who'd keep playing that game? Only cheaters. Legitimate players would just play a different game.
It's the same reason Valve bans accounts on Steam.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:2, Insightful)
The 360 has region codes but the compatibility list on Play Asia suggests that many games are coded for more than one region.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how Blizzard would earn more money going after cheaters? It probably cost them more money to look thru replays and such. Sure if someone is permanently banned they may buy the game again, but except in that scenario? For WoW I can get it since it's a subscription game.
Back in the long ago the online gaming community for Diablo 1 was wrecked literally within weeks after some fucknut released a utility to allow you to hack characters.
As a non cheating player with what I considered to be an awesome character, I was really upset. Certainly I stopped playing within a few days of realizing that the servers were full of tricked out characters that should have taken months to create being played by people who obviously didn't have a clue how the game worked.
I don't doubt Blizzard remember that too, and don't want to see it *ever* coming back. The number of present cheaters is relatively small compared to the deluge that wrecked Diablo 1, but without action it would only get worse.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I have kids that might trash a game cd, so I can't make a backup from something I've already purchased? That's just wrong. In other words, I should go spend another $50 on the same thing?
More importantly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Something the summary missed somewhat in regard to Microsoft's bans is that they're not just for anti-piracy reasons but like Blizzards are also for anti-cheating reasons.
Apparently a rather major oversight was made in development of the 360 whereby the executables are verified for integrity, so you can't modify the executables to cheat on a console capable of running pirated discs.
What they didn't do is implement a method of ensuring integrity of game resources, presumably they figured developers knowing their executables were secure would check integrity of resources themselves which makes sense as every game has individual assets so what's meant by integrity maybe game specific.
The problem is some people have found in some games you can hack the game assetts to give yourself an advantage and cheat and this is one of the main reasons Microsoft is banning. It's also one of the reasons I don't mind paying for XBox live because when Microsoft ban cheaters and void their warranties (which is fair enough, they've modified their hardware) it acts as a great disincentive for people to cheat. That levels the playing field for the rest of us who like to play fair. One of things I hated about PC gaming is no matter how hard developers try, you can't stop cheating on the PC without using game design specific mechanisms limiting somewhat your game's design because the PC isn't a trusted platform whilst consoles can at least to some extent be seen as trusted platforms.
To me I'd rather keep things this way too- I don't want my PC to become a trusted platform and controlled by someone else, I want to retain control but I'm also happy to use consoles for gaming for the advantages of trusted computing. This setup offers the best of both worlds IMO as the only way PCs will ever become cheat free is if they become trusted platforms which likely means you wont be allowed to play MP3s and the like when big corporates get their way.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I have kids that might trash a game cd, so I can't make a backup from something I've already purchased? That's just wrong. In other words, I should go spend another $50 on the same thing?
Absolutely not. Why should you buy your kids another copy when they couldn't take care of the first one?
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
"But 'going without' seems to not be part of today's vocabulary...."
There is a fundamental, philosophical, problem with the traditional means of distribution: the product is abundant.
Cars are not abundant. It takes a significant expenditure of materials and effort to put one together. When I drive off in one, I cannot simply dupe it and give the dupe to my friend. The laws of physics dictate a level of scarcity to this good, and as such it makes perfect sense to expect to receive money from every person who obtains a car.
The world of "data" follows different laws of physics. Once I have the data in my hot little hands, I can dupe it and give it to my friends at zero direct cost to the producer. There is no deprivation of use nor loss of mineral resources nor expenditure of manpower nor anything of the sort on the part of the original developer when I dupe the game. None. And I can keep duplicating this ad infinitum, at the same cost (of zero). Furthermore, my friends can do the same thing with the copy I gave them...there is no quality loss. Once the good exists, it can instantly exist everywhere. It is "abundant."
So, since data follows these laws (rather than the laws of physics as they apply to physical goods) people feel like they are being cheated when they are asked to pretend like data follows the laws of physical matter. They feel like they are buying into a game of control that is unfounded in reality and ultimately to their detriment (since they have to pay money for something that doesn't cost anything to produce *at this point* (excluding initial development costs).
I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly, and harmful to us (our money is valuable and if we can get games for free then we have optimized our entertainment budget and have more money left over to spend on things like real cars or educations for our kids or what-have-you).
What about the potential sale that we are "stealing" by copying a game? We tend to respond to such a representation of the situation with great cynicism. We feel like the only reason you feel entitled to every single "potential sale" is because of your insistence in everyone pretending that an abundant good is not abundant. We also feel that the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism doesn't guarantee a ROI on any kind of development project, so when you pound your fist in frustration at your inability to monetize your efforts we just say, "so try something else...thats what every other entrepreneur in the world has had to do...what makes you special? If you can't make money making games, do something else, and stop whining." That is the same answer we get when we complain about being downsized, or having low-paying jobs, or what-have-you...so we are just responding in turn.
Lastly...the age-old mantra that if you can't get money for every copy of a game sold then nobody will produce games. I call BS. Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy. Enough people pay for the games (even though they don't have to) that the industry remains profitable. If that model suddenly stops working, alternative models will take its place (subscription-based games and so on). If that doesn't work, and we actually reach a state of utter cultural impoverishment where no games (or music or movies, for that matter) are being produced because nobody can figure out how to make a living doing it (and no hobbiests manage to churn out anything but crap)...which I maintain is an economic impossibility...but if it actually does occur THEN it might make sense to talk about legislation...and there would be a conscious buy-in to the legislation from the masses who are hungry for cultural enrichment. However, this has not happened, and I therefore submit that it makes no sense to try to preemptively pass laws based on the premise that it might happen (given that it is unlikely and that the situation could be remedied after the fact anyway).
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The good is only abundant after decidedly non-abundant software engineers, artists, musicians, etc. have worked for a few years to produce the "abundant" final product."
Which is entirely irrelevant, according to the laws of supply and demand, their "product" should net zero because supply always exceeds demand. Imagine you had the same situation in the real world, lets say someone invents replicator technology, suddenly entire industries would go belly up. I find it highly annoying that slashdots resident capitalists are so pro protectionist, you want to protect an industry that clearly has "whip and buggy" issues, they want to try to profit off something that is not scarce. If it were food and water and the means to transport them virtually free, these people would be politically ostracized. These people still profit mightily despite piracy and artificially restricting supply. So until these industries go belly up any argument to the contrary is quite hollow. I could talk about the violation of civil and consumer rights that these industries engage in but I won't bother here since most of the responses are too mired in ideology, rather then reason.
There's no right to profit, period, if you don't like the situation don't work in the industry. Maybe you'd have us go back to pre-internet times and have all our hardware locked down with orwellian spyware just to make sure we were paying for our goods. The truth is modern protectionists need their head read, did prohibition work? Trying to go against the flow of human advancement with primitive territoriality and propertarianism is only going to further stifle innovation. We've seen what "protecting IP" has done for the patent trolls.
I hate to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but Microsoft and Blizzard are right in their regard against cheating. Most paying customers would prefer a cheat-free, level playing field to enjoy. And just as I feel very strongly about the notion of personal property rights of the end user, those rights end precisely where others begin. (Am I showing my Texas personality?) So while everyone should have the right to modify their consoles and their games, they shouldn't then turn that into an advantage in game play that reduces the quality that Microsoft and Blizzard deliver. (I hated saying that too.) I endorse Microsoft's and Blizzard's position on this as far as it supports the general fairness to all users. (Of course, I stop supporting the position where they identify false positives and unfairly lock out innocent users... does that happen? I can only assume it does since no technology from Microsoft has ever been perfect.)
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a limited supply at the one end (engineers and programmers and artists creating content) and a limited supply at the other end (consumers). The unique thing here is an abundant intermediate. In your argument you imply that this intermediate matters more.
Under the standard economics "pure amoral rational actors living in a pure capitalist system" scenario, you actually do not have abundance because nobody produces anything*, because there is.
What we have is an interesting problem of how to incentivize development. Let me vomit out some solutions of various quality:
1. Don't. We don't need software/music/TV anyway.
2. Don't. Product tying is enough.
3. Don't. Some kind people will donate their time to create software, or their money to fund paid development of software, so there is already incentive in our not-quite-pure system.
4. Collective pay. A communist approach within the greater capitalist society.
5. Regulation to enforce something like the GPL on proprietary, unreleased software developed to aid a company's own operations.
6. Patronage model.
7. Artificial scarcity.
8. Don't. Everybody knows that extremely attractive members of the sex(es) most interesting to you are dying to do everything in their power to please artists/actors/directors/designers/programmers/scientists/engineers.
9. Attempt to fuel a cultural shift which generates non-monetary rewards for these actions (see also: 8).
10. Some kind of DRM scheme (yeah, I know: "booooo, hisssss").
*Well, they do produce things, but they lock it up by tying it in some way to items that are not abundant and so can be sold, which is also viable in the current state of affairs.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely not. Why should you buy your kids another copy when they couldn't take care of the first one?
Heh. Do you honestly think kids only trash their OWN stuff? Even not taking into account that the kids might not even be old enough to take proper care of discs, the games might not even belong to them.
Or, if you will, let me tell you about my own experiences. I haven't got kids, I've got a dog - and you'd be *astounded* by the sheer amount of destructive energy that exists in a four-month old husky pup. If you feel like it, google for "husky damage" some time; scratched game discs are really the least of my concerns, but being able to make backups is NEVER a bad idea.
(BTW, I should probably also say that despite everything she's done, I really love my pup dearly and wouldn't trade her for anything in the world!)
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should we be using media that's so easily damaged? I've scratched DVDs simply by putting them in the tray slightly askew.. imagine all media was this fragile? Content owners are all too happy to sell you their wares on disks that get damaged very easily.. and they want to make sure you can't prevent damage by being able to back up what you purchased.
All these companies like playing both sides, they claim they're selling you a license, which means you should be allowed to backup as many times as you want, provided it's only you that's using it, then they turn around and tell you that you're only allowed one copy of the disk since it's the disk they've sold you.. not a license.
So, the question is, when I buy a game, or a movie, or music.. what the hell did I pay for? What am I actually legally entitled to?
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright is not a natural right. It was created by compromise between the public and the content creators. Until they come back to the negotiation table they are going to have all the problems they are having for the obvious reasons they are having them.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, all things being equal if it takes you a hundred times as much text to explain your side of the argument, you are on dodgy grounds.
Here's the simpler side:
People work hard to make games. if you want to enjoy the fruits of their hard work, they ask you to pay them for their time. You get pleasure from games, just as you do from food, beer or the theatre. it's the same principle.
Simple really.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, we just make copies and not worry about it.
Same goes with DVD's the kids watch. I'm not going to *not* take steps to protect the originals just because someone might not like it.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
This. It's rather unfortunate for the small guys who get caught in the big web, but the reality is until copyright is fixed and made reasonable again, the content providers do not have a leg to stand on. They can rant and rail about piracy all they want, but when the legit customers always have the short end of the stick and have no means for redress all due to horribly twisted IP protection laws, eventually even the most honest will turn to piracy out of sheer frustration. Rampant piracy is not an indication of dishonest consumers, it's an indication of greedy producers and developers. The degree of piracy relates (pretty directly) to the degree of unfairness in IP protection laws/methods. Fix copyrights and patents and the piracy problem will solve itself.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
As usual, a long, pedantic diatribe ignoring the issue that copying games without paying for them is ethically wrong.
It's all about getting something for nothing.
-Jeff
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think if I licensed the use of the window technology for exactly one instance of a window in perpetuity -- a common software license -- that yes, I should be able to create a second one after the first one is destroyed without paying any additional licensing costs.
I wouldn't expect someone to produce the new physical window at no cost -- just as I don't expect someone to produce a backup disk for me at no cost -- but I also wouldn't expect to have to re-purchase licensing rights if my previously existing rights had not expired.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Disks cost something, just not very much. But the analogy is more fundamentally flaw -- you purchased the *right to use* the software, not the software itself. If you purchased the *right to use* a window -- say a license to patented manufacturing process -- you wouldn't need to re-purchase that license when producing a replacement window.
Re:You don't say? (Score:1, Insightful)
Warden has been in Diablo 2 for a number of years. It doesn't stop people from cheating in it though, and is how they found the 350k to ban. Every 3 years or so, they ban a bunch of people, but they'll all be back. Worse, many of them are using tools like d2loader, which can rotate cd-keys. Generally the cd-keys are stolen too, so it's not even costing them any money.