Copy protection, Customer prevention!@#!: An open letter to game producers on game copy protection.

"Safedisc":

    This monstrosity should have been the method that affected the legit gamer the least, in fact not at all. I won't get into how Safedisc 1 and 2 prevents some files from being copied by the average CD copying techniques, all you need to know is that it puts "bad sectors" onto a CD on purpose, and most burners don't like to copy bad sectors so when the game looks for those sectors, they don't show up. This in theory was suppose to be invisible to the end user.

   Since you have probably read the rest of this article up till now, guess what? It doesn't always work like that! Some CD drives aren't compatible with Safedisc, so a valid disk might not work in it, not that the average person who bought a Dell or HP system for their 13 year old is going to know to ask about that sort of thing. Even if the drive is compatible with it, sometimes the software doesn't correctly check for Safedisc, and will keep asking you for the disk. I've already mentioned Half-life 2 and what Valve ended up doing to fix this problem. While I didn't have that issue with my copy of Half life 2, I did end up having a problem with Max Payne 2.

   After I got the game installed, I went to fire it up, and the setup dialogue refused to show up. After diagnosing the problem through ample Google searches, I found that many fixed the problem by grabbing a NO-CD patch. This worked like a charm for me, but of course Rockstar wouldn't allow anyone to post this information on their forums. All posts that tried to help out THEIR CUSTOMERS (because once again, pirates wouldn't have this problem) were quickly deleted. Legitimate users having to resort to third party groups who make what the game producer considers "illegal" modifications of the program, isn't exactly a stellar endorsement of the game, or it's makers.

   How much has this system affected pirates, well for the first 2 weeks after this method came out, maybe a little. Now? Not in the least. 5 minutes of using google will lead you to a site that will tell you more than you ever need to know about copying a Safedisc protected CD. Some CD burning software will just copy the disk, Safedisc and all. In fact, the big chunk of piracy concerns to most game producers, come from groups (largely in Asian countries) who do just that. They copy the CD perfectly, as well as making the CD look legit, then sell it for a huge discount compared to the original versions. While that is the kind of piracy that I truly dislike (some college student copying a game they couldn't afford to buy anyway, isn't going to bring down a companies profits) it's still no excuse to make my life miserable.
 

"FADE":

   This is  not a common method of CP, in fact I only have one game with it, Operation Flashpoint. This is a very complex system in that the game somehow detects when a CD has been copied (from what I have found, in a similar method to Safedisc) but doesn't stop the game from working. Over time, the game degrades, guns aren't as accurate, enemies are stronger, and things just "don't work right", but you can still play. This is very clever, as someone copying the game will have no immediate indication that something is wrong.

  I did not have any problems with Operation Flashpoint during the long hours I played it, but many of my friends did, and this is one game that no one I knew pirated (which was very surprising to say the least). Most of the problems occurred after a 'patch' released by Codemasters. The results were just as predictable as the Safedisc issues with Rockstar. No one would acknowledge there was a problem for a very long time. The only responses on support forums were "Original copies do not FADE".

In the end, it was what stopped my group of friends to stop playing Operation Flashpoint. Even though I didn't have a direct issue on my computer, because I couldn't play with my friends, I didn't have any reason to continue to play it.
 

"Online Verification + Encryption + Safedisc"  = %&@#!:

   I have already mentioned Halflife 2, Steam and Valve a great deal in this article, but I still have to dedicate a whole section to it. It is possibly the best example of Copy Protection gone wrong. The very public leak of Halflife 2 and it's source code over a year before it was finally release, caused 2 things.

1) They took another year to rework the game (although many think it just wasn't done)
2) They became anal-retentive about preventing piracy of their game.

If you want to get the full reason why I'm still so mad at Valve specifically, you'd have to hear about my experience with Half life 2:

   The day Half-life 2 was released, I drove strait to EB-Games after work and bought the last copy of the collectors edition (as seen at the top of my 'tower of death'). I had been looking forward to Half-life 2 ever since the first screenshots were released. Now, I called a friend right before I went out to buy the game, he was never a big fan of First person shooters, and did not want to buy Half life 2 without trying it first, so he was going to go download a cracked version. He was just in the process of looking for a copy of it online when I left work. It took me about 1 hour to go to EB-Games, buy a copy of the game, then get home. After a quick shower and something to eat (30 minutes) I started the install.

   Going through the install took about 30 minutes. Then came the 'Decryption' phase. Because thousands of people were just as eager as me to install the game, connecting to a server to get the 'OK' to decrypt the files was near impossible. It was 3 hours before I finally got connected to a server!! Then of course, my computer actually had to decrypt the files, on my AMD 2500 Barton, overclocked to 3200+ speeds, this took almost a whole hour!

   After this was done, I thought for sure I'd be able to play the single player version of Halflife 2. But wait, they weren't done giving me the rubber glove treatment! They had to authenticate my user account and CD key using, you guessed it, online verification! Of course, nothing has changed with their servers, they are still clogged worse than rush-hour traffic after there's been a 30 car pileup.

   After waiting 40 minutes to startup steam and get the latest version of itself, it took another hour before a server finally linked my CD key to my Steam account. After just over 7 hours, I was just about to finally startup Half life 2! Just then, my friend called me, wanting to know what I thought of Half life 2. "I don't know yet, I only just finished getting it installed and authenticated" was my response. "What? I got it downloaded and installed 3 hours ago!?" Yes, you read right, in about 4 hours, with a good internet connection and a popular torrent, he got the game downloaded and installed before I did. He had already played through the first level and decided that he would go out and buy the game, but after hearing what I had to go through just to get the game installed, he almost changed his mind.

   It turns out the cracked copy of the game at that time, didn't have any online authentication, didn't require steam, didn't require decryption, didn't have a CD-Key, and didn't require a login...  WOW! Good job on stopping piracy!.... Now, of course people would have problems later on when it came to getting updates for cracked versions of Half life 2, but even then, cracked updates or updated versions were quickly available online.
 

Conclusion:

   I feel a lot better after getting all that off my chest, and I hope I've gotten my point across to at least a few people. I can only hope that producers start worrying more about their paying customers, rather then the people who wouldn't buy their game regardless of what they do. I feel less like I'm a paying customer, more like I should be "Thrilled to be allowed to play their masterpiece" every time I pick up a new game.

There is so much time and effort put into all the different types of copy protection, even though they universally don't do anything to stop piracy.

Feel free to send comments or corrections to Millsy