How to combat software piracy

I work for a software company, and we sell softwares to IHV for bundling. The price is extremely low (low single digit USD) and yet there are some IHV trying to pirate it. So lower the price is not really the solution, unless your price is zero aka free.

Actually that's what many software vendors are doing. They try to sell services, not softwares. MMORPG is an example. However, not everything can be turned into selling services.

 

However, with non-service computer programs, all it takes is one person to make a very high quality free version of that software and the problem is done. You never have to make another one. There's little room there to make money, so I don't see why a company would even bother with it. Leave it to OS firms like MS, who have to bundle one-time products with the OS in order for it to be functional. Then again, here it become a service, the efficent bundling of existing programs. That's a lot like what SAP does.

 

I don't see it like that. Honest people get it shoved in from behind and the word "piracy" is just being abused to justify the shameless prices. Most pirates would never have bought the software anyway.

 

I think the game is called dreadlords, they have it right.

The first hit is free, if you want patches and more content buy it, get a key and you can dl them. Makes sense.

Basically, turns it into a service.

 

how do they stop people from geting the extra content/patches from warez sites?

epic

 

the product I'm currently working on mostly deals with small low price 'modules' distributed through a portal, so it's not quite like normal game software. However, naturally there have been things I've been doing to help protect users, because at the end of the day the content creators are going to be users too. We also plan to offer completly free or reduced content modules to everyone.

One of the things I've just recently done, is that all modules main data file has around 2kb of data 'randomly' replaced by random numbers. Ie, corrupted. When you purchase a product, you then recieve a ~2kb key file, which is assymetrically encrypted by the server, but also hashed with your user ID. So you can decrypt it fine, and hash it too, which will give you the correct data to fill the blanks, however you cannot reencrypt the data.

GUIDs (globally unique identifiers) are important too. Preventing people from guessing login/keys/etc is important (I know far too many people who have had their original half-life cd key generated then banned, I'm one of them...).
You also have to be very careful with user data too. It gets complex. You don't want the user to feel unwilling to give information over, however you don't want to exploit that information (this is a point of contention I have with my manager, I feel we should salt email addresses in the DB, as we won't ever need to use them unless we are going to spam them...)

There are naturally other things I'm doing. most revolve around some for of signing.

So while it's still copy protection it isn't quite the same as things like ::cough:: sony drm, etc.

There is also user sharing, which is completly different thing entirly. We cannot assume internet access, yet we also cannot assume that someone won't post their user name/password on the web for anyone to use. Getting around a situation like this, while not inconvieniencing our users is a very difficult ballance. Basically we want to stop major user account piracy but turn a blind eye to people who share their account with their friend. This is their problem, for thier concience.

A lot of software is moving in this direction. Vista will help out here too. A lot of what I'm doing is made somewhat redundant by vista's better file security, etc. But I'm going to still do it.

We may also look at ad-supported purchases. Ie, visit a few 'support' web sites and we give you a free module. As long as the user gets to make the choice.

 

I think the best way is to lower the price, as the best ones keep selling a lot, I mean very, very few games worth the price they ask for.

Anyway from a more effective POV on the PC I think it is impossible but on the console GC, it seems Wii too, have the perfect way.

 

Thats Galactic Civilisations 2: Dreadlords.

The game is not 'free' it just has no CD copy protection.
But you need to register your account with the developers to get access to the patches & that requires the CD key + they can monitor logins/downloads & kill accounts that are obviously being abused.

 

Easy to get, cheap to buy, worth playing.
That's all it needs to fight loss of income due to piracy.

(And leave those students alone, they don't have enough to buy them anyway, you don't loose anything, you make your firm a name.)
(Oh, and sue all firms pirating your software, they have the money, they *must* pay !)

 

Yeah, I just got the gold pack of GalCiv 2 within the last week. Brad Wardell, the developer, has said one reason they didn't use copy protection was because most people who'd want to play a turnbased 4x space empire game would be willing to pay for it. If it was an fps, they likely would've had protection of some sort.

So that's one way to fight piracy: make games that most pirates won't want.

 

My thoughts exactly.

How do you guys think about more expansive software like lets say photoshop, flash or maya or whatever downloaded by home users just to use it for themselves?

 

I value the physical product, ive still got all the manuals + boxes for all my games
for example the falcon 4 manual makes the game a hell of a lot more attractive sure i could get downloadable versions of some games but it just isnt the same...

 

(as the developper) install a trap so that when a game is cracked, it knows it but only "acts" about half-way through the game in some obscure manner, like seconds before you defeat a boss, it runs away screaming and you're stuck in an empty arena. crackers would think they've crack the initial protection when they run it afterwards and only play the first level! it wouldn't help in the long term (that trap would probably be cracked eventually too) but I'd love to see the flocks of "legitimate" users on forums complaining and askign what the trick is in the arena! when enough complaining users have ammassed, the bombshell is revealed and chaos ensues. *big grin*

a good piracy protection would be really complicated and frusterating to code I'd imagine (I'm no programmer). embedd checks that check other checks, that check a group of checks that all check a few others, and so on, all embedded in regular code routines for AI, rndering, physics, sound, anything! crackers could have a potential nightmare on their hands trying to trace all the checks back! when they think they've gotten them all, new checks block the game only when the player passes a certain point in the game.

of course this would also be excruciatinglyrisky for the devs as well. a QA nightmare. it would have to be rock-solid

 

How to end software piracy?

MANDATORY LIFE IMPRISONMENT

Treat Software piracy just the same as you would hardware piracy. You can't go around stealing game consoles or Ipods or TV's and expect to rationalize your way out of it, or expect the manufacturers of these devices to have to change their business model to accomodate thieves
Tell the ISP's to cooperate or they will be fined as being accessories...

 

That still wont end piracy. Just as with stealing hardware some people will still take the risk. And what about copying? even if you are able to stop downloading people, wich wont happen because there is no way to check everything thats downloaded, will just go back to the old days of 1 person buying the software and selling it for a couple of bucks to others.

I dont think there is a real way of stopping it, at best you can try to minimize it and the only way to do that is offer a good product for a price people are willing to pay. Looking at today people apperantly are prepaired to pay 60 euros for basic 5 hour shooter #38746343 and do something like online activation but all those things are just a matter of time before its cracked so sometimes I wonder if its actually worth all the money trying people not to copy your game.

 

Most people who pirate would never buy the software in the first place, whether they could afford it or not.

Your average warez guy downloads 20-30 games a year and probably 300 movies and hundreds of music albums. Do you really think he would've bought all of these if there was no way to copy them?

Come on. Piracy is overhyped big time. Invasion of a sovereign country, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and creating a total chaos and anarchy and claiming it is democracy is a bigger problem don't you think?

 

The way I see it too. I won't buy any games for 50+ €, but I bought a bunch of games for 20-30€. Same goes for music and movies, I bought about 50 CD's/DVD's in the last 2 Months alone from foreign companies on Amazon for half the regular price here - the last one I bought in retail in Germany must have been sometime in 2003 or so...

 

But in a very wrong way. Noone wants the dumbed-down version without a proper inlay and packaging regardless of price.

 

(Boy this is a thread resurrection and a half!)

PC games typically launch for £35-40 RRP here in rip-off Britain (which for you US chaps is $70-80. Expensive, no?). You can get them on the Internet for £25 -- is pretty much the top-price I'll pay for a PC game, not because I lack cash, simply because I don't think they've value for money above that.

Here's the rub though. 18 months later the same games can be bought for £10-15 in the bargain section. Arguably they're better games by then to boot -- the launch-time bugs have all been patched out, and the new graphics card you just bought is now actually capable of playing it at top-res with all the toppings turned on. Much better value for money.

Why not charge £15 for them from the get-go? Many more people would impulse-buy a game for that sort of money. It's not like £15 is losing money either (otherwise they wouldn't be on sale at all!).

Or alternatively, why not launch £35-40 products which aren't full of bugs and run like crap on anything but the latest, greatest £400 graphics card? If you can manage to release bug-free games on an unpatchable platform such as a console, why not on the PC? Is the PC game industry's financial model really so predicated on ripping the impatient consumer a new one with an unfinished, over-priced product that any alternative strategy is unviable? Maybe that's why piracy is killing the PC as a platform?

Regarding Steam, etc., I've bought a couple of games through that route and as a concept I actually quite liked it (implementation leaves a lot to be desired perhaps). I'm not overly fussed about having a package I can hold in my hands (i'd rather the trees stayed standing, rather than becoming my game manual; i'd rather not have useless packaging that is ultimately destined to end up in a land-fill). I like the idea that more of my money will go to the people who produce the games, rather than middle-men. That money will (I dreaming!) allow them to produce more, higher quality products, and get a decent reward for it without having to try to rip me off. The flip-side though is that I do expect to pay less for the game overall, but that needn't neccesarily be less that the royalties the game devs would be getting by the normal route.