Garry's Mod Catches Pirates the Fun Way 365
UgLyPuNk writes "A few hours ago, Garry Newman – the creator of Garry's Mod – asked, quite innocently, whether anyone was unable to shade polygon normals. He received a few comments, mostly jokes, but a quick look at Google suggests that there are indeed a few people who are experiencing problems with their game. You can hear Newman's chuckling from here — not the normal response to a wide-spread bug report, but this is no normal bug. It seems that the developer has deliberately enabled an error in GMod, which will only affect people who have pirated the game."
Not a new idea (Score:4, Informative)
Back in the 80's, the developers of a submarine game called Silent Service built in a piracy check that would cause the sailor guy's pants to fly up over his head if your game failed the copy protection. They got quite a few phone calls from baffled pirates.
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Kabul Spy for the Apple ][ which at a certain point leaves you in a jail cell with no escape (in the pirated version), but allowed escape if you actually bought it.
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[citation needed]
as far as I recall from all those years ago, there was no sailor. You spent the game staring out the scope
I also had a pirated copy of it that worked fine at the time.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:4, Funny)
Sucker!
The REAL trick to identifying pirates is to post false claims about pirate-catching tricks and wait for pedantic pirates to correct you claiming they "had a pirated copy that worked fine."
Busted.
=Smidge=
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Settlers II in the late 90s subtly broke the game economy if it detected it had been copied, making iron foundries turn iron-ore into pigs instead of pig iron, which were then taken to the butcher and turned into ham. You couldn't make metals so you couldn't raise an army, but everyone was very well fed....
Took me ages to figure out what was going on, and I LOL'd.
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Dark Star One also broke the game economy but not so subtly. The simply multiplied the price of all purchases by a fairly large number while not effecting the resale price of said items or the amount of money earned by doing tasks.
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Uh, wait, is it Opposite Day?
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Stunts (AKA 4D Sports Driving, a DOS game) had that: if you failed the question check enough times it would let you on the track but crash (the car) after a few seconds.
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I remember Megalomania on the Atari ST would let you play and then just nuke your settlement and loop the endgame "It's All Over!" sound effect over and over.
Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, again on the ST, would get as far as the title screen and then squiggles would appear everywhere (as if someone was drawing on the screen) before finally going straight to black.
Anyone got a compilation of these kinds of anti-piracy tricks?
Ultima III (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultima III wouldn't let you interact with NPCs - they'd say "Honesty is a virtue, I will not help you" or something to the effect.
Personal experience. As a teenager I bought Ultima III (I think) for the Amiga for $many_weeks_allowance. The original floppy was corrupt, and being an expat in a remote country meant I couldn't get it replaced. A buddy mailed me a pirated copy to replace it. A "fun way" to catch pirates for sure, but there I was with a box, shiny cloth map and a game that would tell me I'm dishonest. Never got to play it. Guess whether this experience motivated me to (a) buy more games or (b) pirate games instead.
</childhood_trauma>
I understand the rationale behind copy protection and DRM, but they can make life hard for legitimate users and end up counterproductive.
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Not that it matters now, being so many years ago, but there are sufficient details missing from that account that I'm not particularly inclined to empathize with your situation.
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It was not uncommon for retailers to refuse to take back any opened software products, because they were concerned about people copying the software to their computer and then returning it to get their money back.
Just like DRM for digital stuff, policies for physical products are often crafted for the dishonest, and the honest people sometimes get shafted as a side effect.
Much of the world works this way, and it's endlessly frustrating.
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so that's what happened! still remember that!
There were plenty (Score:5, Insightful)
There were plenty of games which tried to do something sneakily wrong to gameplay if they think you're a pirate.
The problem is that, basically, invariably there's the assumption that such a piece of code is 100% proven and bug-free itself. You know, unlike the rest of the program and unlike other shitty pieces of DRM.
A prime example of what I'm talking about was IIRC Gangsters by Eidos in the '90s. Among other things it would take as a clue that it must be a pirated copy running in an emulator -- until a later patch fixed it -- was if your CD is any other drive letter than D:. Because God knows that no honest customer ever would have more than one HDD or partition or have a RAM-disk or two CD drives or anything, you know?
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The problem is that, basically, invariably there's the assumption that such a piece of code is 100% proven and bug-free itself. You know, unlike the rest of the program and unlike other shitty pieces of DRM.
One of my favorite games when I was young was Robot Odyssey, the Learning Company game on the PCjr. Being a TLC game, about half of the fun was in the many tutorial/learning levels, and the other half was the game itself. Though I enjoyed the tutorials to no end, I was unable to properly re-wire the robots in the actual game, and so was only able to complete the first few levels (about 40 %) of the main game. I tried different strategies on and off for years to try and either fix or get around this odd b
I can listen to you... (Score:3, Funny)
Here in my car
Where the image breaks down
Will you visit me please?
If I open my door
In cars
What's the point? (Score:2)
Seriously what is the point of this? To flush out pirates on forums? Because if it is to be a sneaky anti-piracy system it is pointless. I have heard about games that detect pirated copies and corrupt saves or don't let you finish the game etc, but what is the point of giving pirates a bizarre error message? Wouldn't "Stop being a douche and support indie developers!" be a better message to display?
Not that I would ever actually pay for Garry's Mod as it is just a "dev tool" type mod. I don't see any creati
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You could do something like post on the forum "This problem is fixed in version 1.2.3.2. Registered users can download this update for free.". The real version is, and always was, 1.2.3.2, but when pirated it reports 1.2.3.1 instead. If it's easier to pay your $10 for a genuinely useful product than to try and find someone with a pirated copy of 1.2.3.2 then at least a few people might be more likely to register.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, would you prefer a more intrusive form of DRM? Removing the shading from a game isn't as bad as some of the DRM schemes that we've seen before by the bigger publishers. The authors aren't looking out to catch the pirates, they're not looking to sue anyone, they're just comically (inside joke, of course) telling the people that they've received an inferior product instead of the normal way of big titles where the pirated versions are superior to the retail version.
I for one welcome this. It's so small that it doesn't cause too much harm to the pirates in terms of game play, yet big enough that the pirates know they can receive the feature for just $10-$15 depending on prior Steam purchases. It reminds me of when I downloaded the X-Men Wolverine production rip. The CGI was incomplete and it was a nice reminder that I should just wait and rent the DVD (a very effective piracy deterrent, if you ask me). Unfortunately for Fox, I was bored well before the missing CGI came into play (it really was a terrible movie), and fortunately for them, I'm interested in seeing the new X-Men First Class when it comes to theaters in June (let's hope it's not terrible).
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, I stand corrected. +1 informative
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I'd heard that the piracy check was based upon SteamID- If your account isn't on the gold-list, it crashes. Not infallible, I suppose, but it's more concrete than many other schemes.
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The problem with introducing fake error messages, is that they cause confusion with real error messages. Now you'll potentially have legitimate customers wondering what's wrong with their graphics card or drivers, when it's the DRM that's at fault. And DRM is often not reliable, and will typically assume a copy is invalid, if it fails to validate a game.
Everyone loves to jump to the conclusion that DRM in games is always going to break. I have only ever experienced this once. My mother board broke and I had to replace it and then GTA4 noticed and made me reinstall. It made me reinstall by constantly making the game unplayable through me being drunk whenever I got into a car. It did not take me very long to figure this out by a bit of googling.
I also understood why they did it. Me changing my MB was very hard to differentiate from me zipping up the installe
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone loves to jump to the conclusion that DRM in games is always going to break. I have only ever experienced this once.
And now scale your experiences up. A DRM scheme that undergoes even basic testing will always work in the most common cases, but there will always be some set of people for whom it doesn't work correctly. These people now have the software that they've paid for exhibiting bugs because of the DRM.
I have a sneaky suspicion that the biggest complaints about DRM come from people who know that the perfect DRM system with no bugs would also affect them in some way
If, by some miracle, you find someone who can write a completely bug-free DRM system, don't waste their talents on writing DRM - they're well into the top 0.001% of all developers, so get them to work writing bug-free code in your real product. Any DRM scheme adds complexity, and those of us who write software know that anything that adds complexity is going to add bugs. Some of the bugs may be minor, some may affect only a single user, but a single legitimate customer having a negative experience caused by code that has no benefit to any legitimate customers is something that I find unacceptable. This is why I don't allow DRM to be included with anything that I create.
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I've worked for a company with completely opposite politics: report that everything is in order, operation completed successfully, even if authentication fails.
The system is not 100% secure. It never is. Poke at it enough and you WILL find a way in, one we never thought about. But one way to stop you from poking enough is to convince you you succeeded. Yay, the clever hacker circumvented the dumb authentication system, victory is theirs, let's look for something else to break. The system gives impression of
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Well, would you prefer a more intrusive form of DRM?
I'd prefer none. It's a waste of effort on the part of the developers (usually, it is cracked), and it typically affects actual customers as well.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
We tried something similar in one of our software products. If the software detected modifications to the binary, it would run, but some features would perform 'erratically', and periodically we'd slow the execution down to a crawl. We thought we were being clever until we started seeing a few reviews appearing that panned the software as slow / buggy / unreliable. If you add a scheme of this sorts, you're potentially sacrificing the reputation of your product, and of your company / development team. For every person stupid enough to seek support for a product they don't own, there are another 5 or 6 who aren't that dumb (and will forever remember your company as the one who makes buggy software)
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For every person stupid enough to seek support for a product they don't own, there are another 5 or 6 who aren't that dumb (and will forever remember your company as the one who makes buggy software)
I can understand this if your anti-piracy measures are affecting legitimate users, but if the users complaining were pirates, do you really want them as customers in the first place? They weren't paying for the software, so why do you care if they're happy?
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because prospective legitimate customers will still read their comments and decide not to buy your software.
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If they are people who wouldn't pay anyway, and it doesn't cost you anything to support them, then you are not losing anything. They may still give you free advertising. Some people really do use pirated programs for evaluation - and sometimes unknowingly. For example, if you know one of your friends has a particular program, then you may try it on their computer before buying it. You don't know if they've got a legal or pirated copy, but if it crashes while you're using it and that say 'oh, yes, it doe
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Oh no everyone will know AssMan385 is a pirate! I am sure this will bring him such shame that he will be forced to leave his home town and work as a sewage cleaner in Bangkok!
I hang around the Minecraft forums a lot and the pirates have absolutely no shame. At worst exposing them forces them to come up with a new user name.
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I've read a success story about a game in which the finish of the first level wasn't there when the DRM check failed. It was cracked multiple times & uploaded but none of the pirates notices the game could not be finished. It took 2+ months for a real crack to be made while lots of gamers got frustrated with the cracked version and the game had higher sales then normal in the first 2 months.
S
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and the game had higher sales then normal in the first 2 months.
Compared to what? How did they know how many sales there would've been if it hadn't been for that? I admit it's kind of a clever tactic, but I'm interested in how they know this.
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They don't. Some bean counter somewhere estimated sales and then sales may have been higher than what was expected and they attributed it to the copy protection.
The logic failure of these companies is beyond absurd.
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Well if you think about it logically - it should be higher than normal. Maybe not by much, but higher.
You've just tricked pirates into playing a trial of your game, basically. At least a few of those pirates should now be willing to buy it since there is nowhere to get it free yet, and they are impatient.
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That was Spyro: Year of the Dragon for the Playstation. They did a lot of sneaky stuff to make pirated copies not fun, but randomly, so you would think it worked fine until it triggered somewhere else.
You can read about it here [gamasutra.com].
Note that since it was a console game there was a very low chance of false positives compared to a PC release.
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Garry's mod has spawned at least three different games with very different gameplay from regular HL/CS, a find the spy before he kills you type game, racing games some where you build the track first Co-op building is fun too.
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That's not Gmod's only antipiracy measure. You need to link your Steam account and prove you have Garry's Mod in order to download any addons, and Gmod isn't any good without the addons
So far as creativity goes, if you get some addons, you can build all sorts of fun things. A friend and I spent four hours putting together various types of weapons in a fort-wars sort of thing. I had great fun figuring out how to build an effective antimissile system.
I've played more time in Gmod than any other game I have, a
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Last I checked Minecraft wasn't a mod for HL2 that just made a simple interface for the physics features/dev console.
I bought Minecraft in Alpha.
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Just because somebody sees through the lies you're telling doesn't make them pro-piracy. It just means that they're in touch with reality. Any pirate that's likely to pay for a game will do so whether or not their is any DRM. Claiming otherwise is just disingenuous.
And if they weren't going to pay for the game anyways, it makes precisely zero difference whether or not they pirated the game as the developer isn't making any money either way.
The precise limit to any harm is on the basis of idiotic publishers
The article site sucks (Score:5, Informative)
I like to RTFA, but you can be sure that I won't be visiting that site ever again.
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It's 2011, install an adblocker already!
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>10 KILL KILL KILL
>20 GOTO 10
Dummies (Score:4, Interesting)
Pirating GMod 10 is like visiting five ice cream shops in a row and getting enough "tastes" to fill a quart. Simply not worth the effort, considering that GMod10 is, was, and will remain ONLY. TEN. DOLLARS. If you own any of Valve's excellent recent games, you've fulfilled the only other requirement (a Source engine game). Chances are high that if you're interested in GMod10, you've already got one or more of those.
I can understand pirating a $50 game because you want to stick it to the publisher or you want to try it out before shelling out, but pirating something that costs $10 strikes me as a remarkably pointless gesture.
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I think most of the people who pirate GMod do it because of the shit they pulled on people who tried to distribute the free version after they switched to pay. $10 to selfish idiots is still $10 to selfish idiots.
Re:Dummies (Score:4, Funny)
I can understand pirating a $50 game...
Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.
Re:Dummies (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand pirating a $50 game because you want to stick it to the publisher or you want to try it out before shelling out, pirating something that costs $10 strikes me as a remarkably pointless gesture.
What on earth makes you think it's a "gesture"? Come to that, what makes you think that pirating the $50 game is a "gesture" either? Stop assigning higher motives to things that are far more easily attributed to "getting stuff for free".
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Yup. The proper gesture would be waiting until the game was on sale. At least that way the publisher sees an increase in sales at the lower price. Then again why price the game low from the outset if people are willing to pay the higher price? It may sound like a shitty attitude, but it is economics 101.
If you pirate games don't act surprised if the developer of you favourite game closes shop or doesn't get the contract for a new version. This is even more true for a game developped by an indie developer.
Price isn't the real issue (Score:2)
People always love to toss out the excuse that game (software) piracy exists mainly because of cost. Yet we see many examples where people will pirate (steal) items with 99 cent prices like those on the App store.
If you "understand" pirating a $50 game then you would understand pirating a $10 game. Justification on price is odd because your still excusing theft? I will assume the price points are merely the level at which you would succumb to the temptation, in other words, where you would feel justified in
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there may be a reason, if the cracked version lets you play without steam. I hate steam and have pirated games that I already bought just because my computer was steam free and I didn't want to install steam.
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Without condoning or condemning piracy in any general or specific terms, cost is relative. $10 isn't a lot to most people, but if you don't have it it may as well be a million. Maybe you're only just making enough to pay the rent and get food on the table, maybe you're putting every spare penny into saving for something important or to clear debts, or maybe (and I suspect this probably accounts for the majority of piracy) you're too young to get your own income.
Of course, the customary reply here is "if y
Re:Dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue that number 4 is still at the top of the stack for why people pirate.
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3: Right, friendly to the gamers? You mean Valve, the company whose DRM-DigitalStore is creating a monoculture in the industry that's already rearing its ugly head and limiting consumer choices? Look at all of those games out there (and not just the Valve 1st party ones) that are ONLY available by Steam/Steamworks.
Any system where they can and do (even if it's only one person, that's one person too many) ban people (stealing their entire libraries from them) for a forum post is unacceptable.
It's quite harmf
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Look at all of those games out there (and not just the Valve 1st party ones) that are ONLY available by Steam/Steamworks.
And look at all of those games out there that are only available on Xbox Live Marketplace.
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Any system where they can and do (even if it's only one person, that's one person too many) ban people (stealing their entire libraries from them) for a forum post is unacceptable.
Steam didn't do that, you idjit. Bioware did that. Or EA, depending on who you ask.
Steam didn't have anything to do with it.
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I am not condoning piracy, but depending where you are in the world $10 is either peanuts or a large part of your income. If you live in any 'first world' country then it is more likely to fall into the first category.
My 10 rupees.
Payment method; currency value (Score:2)
Money (either try before you buy, or sheer ludicrous pricing schemes).
Really not an acceptable excuse in this case. It's $10.
Unless the work's publisher won't take your payment method, such as cash in the case of somebody still in school who does not yet qualify for a checking account. Or unless you happen to have been born in a country with an undervalued currency [wikipedia.org], such as many countries not in the top 20 economies [wikipedia.org].
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That is even more pitiful. Some people pirate because they believe that a copy costs nothing to make. While technically true, they ignore how much time and money was invested to make the game possible.
Every dollar received by a games company is another reason to continue making good games. Sure there are some games that are just ridiculously overpriced ($60), but for me that just makes me wait to buy it at a deal or see if the reviews believe it is a 'must buy'. I will admit I have played pirated games, bu
WARNING - DON'T CLICK THE LINK (Score:5, Informative)
There's an incredibly loud auto-playing advert. Thanks for the warning, guys.
More advert submissions from the slashdot janitors...
So what if a legitimate customer gets hit? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem I have with these kinds of protections is that they also might affect paid customers; Same as with strict DRM.
I already bought Garry's Mod after having played it for free (as the HL2 mod).
It was less than 10 dollars, so a real bargain. But I would have reconsidered it if I heard of this beforehand.
Nonetheless, all power to the developer to protect their property.
Re:So what if a legitimate customer gets hit? (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA:
"Making the situation even sweeter, the number which appears in brackets after the error statement is in fact the gamer’s 64-bit steamid.
Y’see, Steam keeps a list of which accounts have actually forked over the $9.99 for a legit copy of GMod – so it’s a simple matter of checking ids and turfing out the pirates."
1. There's no way a legitimate customer will get banned. They don't ban you outright for reporting the error message, only when they have proven that you indeed did NOT buy it.
2. There's probably a (very unlikely) chance for a legitimate customer to be affected with the error message due to an actual bug in the copy protection code, but in that case how is that different from the Michael Jackson game? At least with the error message, Valve can help you fix it (e.g., if their records show that you didn't pirate the game, Valve tech support can ask you to reinstall the game, etc.) No such reprieve for the MJ game -- if the copy protection triggered on a legitimate copy, well, it's definitely no fun anymore is it?
The only hole now is that the steam ID is probably unencrypted, so malicious users can probably troll others by posting the error message on Steam tech support with their victim's steam ID. But since Valve has the balls to release this info, they probably already have some mechanism in place to prevent these trollers from doing so.
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If I RTFA correctly, the only "bans" being handed out are on the official GMod forums, which are entirely separate from Steam, so there's little room for trolling.
READ: Valve has nothing to do with this. This is the GMod dev banning people from his own forums, and nothing more.
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"It was less than 10 dollars, so a real bargain. But I would have reconsidered it if I heard of this beforehand."
To summarize:
Turns off honest potential customers.
Doesn't cause the pirates to buy a copy.
The author/owner publicly outed himself as someone who isn't after the money. Seems more like this is to enjoy hurting others.
Sounds like someone I want to give money to.
Google kills DRM. (Score:2)
A few hours ago, Garry Newman – the creator of Garry's Mod – asked, quite innocently, whether anyone was unable to shade polygon normals.
A few moments ago, Googlebot visited the sites.
A hour from now, a puzzled evil pirate gamer types "Unable to shade polygon normals" in Google, and guess what pops up? They're going to think "oops, I'd better not report that issue. In fact, it's better not to report any issues in any of my pirated games! Glad this issue has already been documented!"
This is the information age. People document things openly. Don't build DRM that is built on top of ignorance and secrets. It only works for a while and you waste
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At least it'll keep pirates from wasting tech support time as much.
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How many sales did they lose because people posted "Garry's Mod is shitty, don't buy it, lots of errors" in other gaming forums and such?
Banned from Steam (Score:2)
In response to the several comments re: "it's all in good fun, just a joke, not trying to catch pirates" -- note that what's happening is tricking people with a fake error message that includes their Steam ID, so when they report it can get their account banned.
FTA: "Not long after posting the request, the user found themselves permabanned from the forums for using pirated software."
Not a new idea, and not a good idea. (Score:2)
The piracy detection fails occassionally, and a honest paying customer gets hurt (and probably buys less in the future, because he feels (and rightly so) that he got cheated).
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Every enhancement and change a developer makes to software might fail occasionally, and the honest paying customer gets hurt. That's why you test these things and offer support to your paying customers. Piracy detection is no different in this regard.
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Surprised more games don't do this (Score:2)
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Obviously you'd have to extensively QA test any potential checks and the consequences and prevent false positives
Just like every other DRM scheme to date? I mean, if it is as simple as "doing extensive QA testing", it must be done today already, and no reports of false positives of DRM schemes can be found.
Plus, as other people have pointed out, if it isn't clear that the behaviour is because of DRM, people will assume the game is just buggy as hell, and avoid buying anything from that distributor in the future.
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Obviously you'd have to extensively QA test any potential checks and the consequences and prevent false positives
Just like every other DRM scheme to date? I mean, if it is as simple as "doing extensive QA testing", it must be done today already, and no reports of false positives of DRM schemes can be found. Plus, as other people have pointed out, if it isn't clear that the behaviour is because of DRM, people will assume the game is just buggy as hell, and avoid buying anything from that distributor in the future.
Not necessarily. Do you think Garry's Mod is bugged because it can't render normals? What about Batman Arkham Asylum after people complained they couldn't glide over a particular gap?
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One would assume the cracker to change the actual copy-protection check function, always returning true (or whatever number represnts "pass"). Seems like an awful waste of time changing all the places it's called from.
Plus, let's face it, copy protection has been tried in sooo many different ways and forms, and has yet to be implemented so it works. From the color-discs in Monkey Island to the abnormaly large file on whatever tha
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The point is to make the entire exercise a timesink. And woe betid
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I think Half-life 2 did something like this. I remember playing a pirated version once, and a couple hours into the game, an NPC would outrun you and lock a fence door ahead of you, then autosave. Damn I hated that NPC, standing there and looking at me through the fence. And yes, I later bought the game.
The Innocence Project (Score:3)
Before you salute this vigilante gesture, a lone captain taking on the high seas of piracy, stop and consider these necessary questions:
1. How does the developer determine whether the customer's version of the product (a mod, no less) is legitimate or pirated?
2. Is this method a 100% foolproof way to detect a pirated copy?
3. Could a false positive ever be detected, flagging a legitimate customer as a pirate?
4. Could a programming error, introduced either now or in the future, ever flag a user as a pirate?
5. Could a cracked game executable, modified content files, or lack of Internet connection ever flag a user as a pirate?
6. What does the developer do with this new list of suspected users? Is it merely for research purposes, or does he plan to turn it over to other authorities (i.e. could these users be perma-banned not just from the forums, but also from the mod, from the game, or from the Steam network?)
7. What makes the developer think the pirate community can't bypass this slightly more deceptive form of DRM, like they have so many times in the past?
I do not condone the actions of people who would pirate an indy developer's $10 game, but I also don't condone a developer running wild on an anti-piracy power-trip. By banning every single person who complains of this from his forums, he may be inadvertently banning users with legitimate problems. It wouldn't be the first time. [arstechnica.com]
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From TFA:
"Making the situation even sweeter, the number which appears in brackets after the error statement is in fact the gamer’s 64-bit steamid.
Y’see, Steam keeps a list of which accounts have actually forked over the $9.99 for a legit copy of GMod – so it’s a simple matter of checking ids and turfing out the pirates."
As such, only people who reported the problem AND whose Steam accounts lacked a proper purchase of Garry's Mod were banned.
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1. How does he know there's no bug in his copy protection code that does not inadvertently trigger for legitimate users under ANY circumstance
According to the article, the error message includes the user's Steam account number, which can be used to distinguish any cases in which the user actually paid for a license but is still getting rejected by the copy-protection check.
2. How does he know the people "pirating" haven't paid for a legit copy and decided to get around all the BS restrictions by using a crack anyway.
If all the serial numbers have been metaphorically filed off, then the Steam account number referenced is probably nonexistent anyway, so who are they really accusing of piracy? If someone's using a crack to work around restrictions, then this is just one more restriction to w
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Lots of people will try a cracked game in order to see if the game is worth buying.
And then blame M$ for their malware infested windows box.
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What if you don't have an internet connection or want a game that you can still install when steam goes out of business in 5-10 years.
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So they say. Now, I believe they will do their best to remove all DRM from games if Steam goes out of business, but if someone seizes their assets, etc, you're SOL.
Now, I have a decent amount of money invested in Steam, so I hope this doesn't happen. Just saying it's not a guarantee like you seem to think.
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Have you tried to circumvent a Steam only game? I have a friend who did. It's a pain in the ass. He showed me all the "simple" steps he had to go through. This was for a $5 game, too. I said, "For all the time you spent on that, you could have worked 15 minutes of overtime and bought it."
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I read the article for you, the id is bounced against a purchased list before banning.
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Right, but I own Garry's Mod. This means I can check against my friends list who doesn't own Garry's Mod, copy their steamID from the CSS games we play together, and start posting up "error messages" - this is what the person you're replying to is trying to point out.
However, presumably it only "counts" on the official forums, and only if the Steam account posting matches the SteamID in the error message.
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Sounds like a classic protection racket to me ....
"Buy GMod .. or your account might get banned."
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Sounds better than "shoplift and face jail time and a criminal record". Everything is relative.
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Nice catch. Gary Numan did a new wave punkish synthpop song called "cars" that I liked back in 1980 when it made the top 40 charts in the US. Apparently it had hit #1 in the pop charts in the UK the year before. A true one hit wonder. So maybe he switched from writing music to writing code.
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Apparently it had hit #1 in the pop charts in the UK the year before. A true one hit wonder..
Maybe he's viewed the way in the states. However he had a previous number 1 single and album in the UK.
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Nice catch. Gary Numan did a new wave punkish synthpop song called "cars" that I liked back in 1980 when it made the top 40 charts in the US. Apparently it had hit #1 in the pop charts in the UK the year before. A true one hit wonder. So maybe he switched from writing music to writing code.
He is also known for 'Down in the Park' which was covered by The Foo Fighters (on the X-Files soundtrack, no less) and Marilyn Manson in the '90's.
I believe he toured internationally sometime in the last few years - he's still going strong.
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Or a business move to get a shitload of masochists to buy the game.
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Gary claims a zero false positive thus far and that he expects it to remain zero. And based on comments he's made, either you're lying (extremely likely), or your install is corrupt.
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Exactly. If it hurts just [i]one[/i] legitimate customer, it's a terrible system. Even if it only hurts pirates, it will still give off the impression that the game is bug-ridden. Those pirates could have been word-of-mouth sales otherwise.
Does this thing really need DRM anyway? I mean it's a Source Engine [i]mod[/i]... not a particularly inspired one either. It's essentially just a physics toy. How the guy even gets away with selling it in the first place is beyond me. I guess there must be just that many