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Boobytrapping software for filesharing sites
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Piracy isn't doing the software and videogames industries many favors so I'm often wondering about the ethics of these industries strike back? Sure, you might track IPs and sick some lawyers on the pirates, but I wouldn't feel the least bit bad for pirates if companies went a step further and flooded filesharing sites with rigged versions of their most popular software. I don't think it would discourage pirates in the long run but it might convince a few on the fence to not waste their time on a disguised 3GB Rickroll and instead buy the product legitimately. And I'd imagine it'd make the software devs feel better to dupe pirates.
So how about it? Is it wrong for devs to circulate disguised or virus-laden programs on well-known filesharing sites, hoping pirates will take the bait? Should they drown shady websites with their own manufactured bogus activation codes or would that just be vindictive or pointless? Would doing this and publicly acknowledging it later hurt a company's reputation?
So how about it? Is it wrong for devs to circulate disguised or virus-laden programs on well-known filesharing sites, hoping pirates will take the bait? Should they drown shady websites with their own manufactured bogus activation codes or would that just be vindictive or pointless? Would doing this and publicly acknowledging it later hurt a company's reputation?
emnmnme on
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You mean other than being illegal?
Some software companies have been doing this for YEARS. And they riddle them throughout the game in different sections so essentially, pirates have to play through the entire game to make sure they got them all. The worst ones are like the one in Earthbound where at the final boss if it detects it is a pirated game it deletes your saves (thus, making the person play through like a hundred hours of game to get there and make sure it works when they try to patch it). Sometimes, it's something subtle like in Spyro, where they start increasing the number of keys or whatever you have to collect to get to the next area, and since there aren't enough, you can never progress.
This does a few things:
It takes longer for the cracked game to be released
The majority of a games sales are within the first two months. The longer you can keep a cracked game off the torrents, the more sales (potentially) you will get from people who want the game.
It gives the pirates something to do
They enjoy a good challenge, since most of them do it for fun, not profit, and enjoy the challenge of being the first to crack it. It also keeps them from moving on to other games, hopefully causing a backlog of games to crack and allowing for fewer of them to be on the torrent sites.
It's not a bug or virus
This makes it so that potential customers don't think that the game itself is buggy, but think that it's the pirated version and are then more interested in getting a legit copy of the game and play it.
Also, if you think that a legitimate purchaser will never get fucked by some hare-brained DRM scheme, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Yes, if implemented poorly it can appear to be a game breaking bug and hurt sales, but better to implement something that causes bugs for pirates, than implement a bad DRM scheme like SecuROM that hurts the people that actually paid money for the game. In the case of Titan Quest, instead of dumping the user to the screen, they should have had the quest be renamed to something like, "Stop pirating our games and fetch a legitimate game from your nearby retail store".
The argument that they've been doing this for years is not a good one, it's essentially an Appeal to Tradition.
The argument that they want to get as many sales as possible in the first couple of months doesn't really justify this behaviour either. The counterargument is that pirates will not bother to buy the game anyway, because unless the game's got something really fucking revolutionary, chances are people will be happy playing a similar game of the same genre until it does get cracked.
"It's not a bug or virus", frankly, sounds like legal arse-covering. It's not the developers job to get vengeance upon law breakers.
Yes, piracy is always going to happen, but companies will NEVER stop trying to prevent as much of it as possible. Fortunately, with this type of protection, rather than third party software or limited installs, it's fairly invisible to the legit customer and isn't a problem. Sure, there are going to be people patient enough to wait for a fully functioning crack. There are also a LOT of casual pirates who do so just because they can and download speeds are fast enough that it's not a problem. Torrenting has gotten simple enough for anyone to do it. If those types of people they are trying to convince to buy the real thing. They are much easier to convince to do so, as if you make it hard enough, or make them wait long enough, they will prefer to simply put out the cash if it's something they want.
I mentioned that they have been doing this for years since the OP brought it up like no one has tried to do something to only affect pirates. When in reality, they have been doing this for years, and it's not a new idea.
What is their job, then? How much can they do without it being considered "vengeance?"
They can put up basic install/first run safeguards. Easily broken since the full game is playable once cracked.
They can use the same sort of safeguards all throughout the game, making it crash and show a screen questioning the legitimacy of the software. Is this vengeance, or merely multiple safeguards as above?
They can make it behave strangely as if it were buggy, as in the case of Batman. Is this vengeance?
Personally I think it's the "developer's job" to put in as much protection as they think is appropriate to ensure their game isn't easily piratable. Naturally a developer wants those as sales. "Try before you buy" is not a legitimate argument as the main motivation for piracy.
Rigging games with subtle game-breakers seems like a solid strategy. The difficulty is in being nonintrusive to legitimate users.
Like seriously, if you whine that some games never get fully hacked or a couple of months is like an eternity you're being extremely obtuse.
Personally I think it's the developers job to make a complete functional product. Effort spent putting booby traps into their software is not only time not spent adding additional features or testing software for more bugs, but introduces legitimate bugs in the way of unnecessary complexity in the code.
I'm not making excuses for pirates. All I'm saying is this is the same product that legitimate customers might get, and might have to suffer for as a result.
Developers can write unit tests and such to help with debugging, but practically speaking it's not the programmers who test for most gameplay bugs (Does it compile? Good!) but the people hired specifically for that job. Adding features late in the process other than those that were planned from the beginning is bound to introduce more bugs.
Adding code that would only be triggered under very specific conditions is fairly "safe" and easy to test for.
Oh come on, I can't be that hard to stick some bugs in a game. Make the camera spin around the character, remove all the enemies from the last level of an FPS, make that shady copy of Microsoft Word not recognize the 'O' key - these kids of things sound like they can be done in a day or two.
if ( piracy_flag == 1 )
batman.glide = 0
It doesn't matter if it's easily circumventable, the point is that nobody discovered it for a few days after the game released. That is the entire goal of this. You spend a small amount of time and effort in order to ensure an equally small window wherein you can be assured your working game will only truly be available in stores.
A lot of man hours are always put into things not integral to the game. Interfacing correctly with the console UI. Support for multiple resolutions and modes. Code to ease the porting process. Additionally, the people who deal with this stuff are separate from the "extra feature" people who are separate from the "bug testing" people. The anti-piracy guy's job is not less important than anyone else's.
While I agree with the unlikelihood that the antipiracy hooks posed any significant opportunity cost, it's actually normally the case that the engine is written with such hooks in mind, and the technology involved can be complex.
Generally such technology is leased from third parties by EA or whoever, though.
Of course there's a bit more to it than that. I read the Spyro article too, which probably used way out of date techniques by now as well.
Note that this was programmed from scratch in earlier days of anti-piracy measures, and licensed/standardized protection probably requires significantly less effort. The time spent on copy protection (as opposed to anticrack protection) is standard in every game.
Boobytrapping the game with "bugs" a la Arkham Asylum? Good form.
"Accidentally" "leaking" what looks like a full game, but turns out to be a demo that cuts into a Rickroll-style "play our game" FMV after a stage or two? Excellent form.
Edit: I take it back. Boobytrapping downloaded versions is perfectly fine, as long as it's a separate avenue than the legit one a la FyreWulff's examples. Putting a nuke in retail CDs? No, because it has a chance of hitting the paying customer. It needs to be a separate delivery system.
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Download Batman: AA and you're playing through when suddenly "Never Gonna Give You Up" starts playing through the Asylum speakers and the music video pops up on all the TV monitors around the rooms, then Batman starts dancing Rick's part and singing while "please purchase this game to continue playing" scrolls across the bottom of the screen with a link to the online store.
If people don't like files disappearing from the /system/ folder and/or losing half their registry, maybe they shouldn't pirate the fucking game. Because the only way to get the booby trapped version is to pirate the game. Legitimate customers have never been hit by it.
However, later versions of the software will simply just silently ban them from using any servers I run and make gigantic space-consuming files, because of Win7's UAC.
Is there a way to lime a heart?
'Cause,
I don't like the sneaky spyware/rootkit stuff, but something that just outright nukes the fuck out of them for some reason I love the idea of. Probably because of "the only way to get the booby trapped version is to pirate the game."
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
No matter how simple you may think it is to put these kinds of things together, it still costs money. Significant money. The people (you) who purchase the game are paying for features that are only available in the pirated version. I know that's a funny way of putting it, but that is the way it works out. The price of your game is essitially higher as a result because either: a) That time could have been spent adding more content or polishing existing gameplay. b) The game could have been cheaper. c) The developer could have made more profit on the game. I'd say all three of those options are preferable to having the knowledge that a pirate somewhere was having a slightly more difficult time playing this game I bought, thanks to me.
None of the great games I've bought were great because of their anti-piracy measures, and I've never seen a crappy game sell well because there wasn't a crack. The idea is moronic.
Oh and for the record, none of my games have DRM in the first place. There is zero excuse to download a 'fixed' version, because I already explicity allow backups in the EULA. So no excuses about "zomg no cd crax"
1.) Never assume ANYTHING about who will and will not be hit by it. People lose discs all the time.
2.) If you must rig a game with anti-piracy measures, it's not ethical to take some sort of misguided, automated "revenge". You have no idea if the person actually did something wrong and furthermore, it's not within your rights to fuck with their computer. At worst, you lost a sale. Your shenanigans could cost the assumed pirate much much more.
Edit: So your games have no DRM and you encourage backups. That's worse, because potentially a legitimate customer who didn't make a backup and lost their copy will think the torrent is exactly the same as their original and not think twice about grabbing it.
Edit 2: Just informationally, I'm not arguing this from the point of view of someone who pirated a game and got infected with some virus or my computer screwed up. I do very little PC gaming and all the games I do have were purchased over steam or a similar download service. I object strictly on moral grounds.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
None of my games are disc releases and they can all be redownloaded from OFFICIAL servers endlessly.
Zero legit customers have ever been hit by it. None. Null. 0. The only booby trapped versions are ones uploaded to pirating sites. I didn't lose a sale because pirates aren't really interested in paying for other people's work in the first place. And they were too stupid to download the demo that features 2/3rds of the full game.
No, they can redownload it for free from the official servers and back it up locally to a CD or so on. No excuses.
But on the other hand, I really don't see a legitimate reason you should get stuff off of torrents. You KNOW it is illegal. I don't care about your intention. If you want to "edit" a game, etc, ask permission first.
Lost the disk? Sucks, buy another one. I have done it, and will do it again. I think I have bought Diablo 2 like 7 times in my life because of this.
Hypothetical- Fryewulff- if someone said in an email "hey I am a games editor etc etc here is some of my work, would you mind if I edited some stuff into your game etc etc" what would you do?
This is still bad logic. It's as bad as the argument that "time spent implementing online modes that nobody will play means one less single player level." Games are made by large teams, everyone has their job, and generally a lot of effort in one place doesn't mean another area suffers. Games are modular. One guy can work on the anticrack protection independent from the level designers. He was hired to do that specific job, it's not like he'd be more useful drawing textures.
Also, look at the Spyro article from last page. This math is all simulation but I think illustrates costs decently well. Four weeks of one man's time, plus more time for bug testing. Let's say that's 200 man hours. At $20 an hour that's $4000 strictly devoted to anti-piracy measures. If the game sells 40,000 copies that's 10 cents per sale. If it sells 400,000 copies it's one penny per sale. That is not much expense. If it prevents only a few zero-day pirates resulting in a couple of extra sales it will have paid for itself.
That's just Spyro. Nowadays it's common enough that you don't have to write this stuff from scratch, you use your company's tried and tested protection tech for multiple games. It takes much fewer man hours to get it up and running.
Another game that I released, is now free, and has an explicit license that allows people to add content to the game without it turning it into a legal clusterfuck.
I have all the bases covered.
While I applaud your good faith effort to tackle every possible concern with losing the game file, I still think it's wrong to release misleadingly labeled malicious code anywhere for any reason.
I don't think it's productive to continue coming up with more and more elaborate what-ifs of how innocents could be harmed, but didn't you ever think at any point that you may not have thought of everything? Maybe only one person falls victim. Maybe no one ever does. But the fact that the code is out there is enough for me to object.
Really, when you go to IllegalBootlegWarez.com and download software, you have to have some expectation that there's people out there who might have no qualms about exploiting your machine for their own amusement or profit.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
This falls into two wrongs don't make a right. I'd also question the legality of uploading malicious code.
Have you had someone look over your "booby trapping" process to make sure it doesn't run afoul of various state laws regarding computer contamination or criminal mischief?
Yup. There ain't nothing illegal about it. But I do find people defending piracy, which is 100% illegal, fucking hilarious
Edit: here's what it does. After clicking on the (dummied out) main menu, the background switches to WindowsDirClean Pro(tm) and pops up this dialog:
(background blurred)
Clicking Yes has 3 more layers of "Are you sure?" "Are you reallly, reallly, really sure?" and so on.
Clicking No pops up a dialog telling them to stop pirating or else their dick will fall off and exits.
Arrest me now, officer.
But three lefts do.
Hell, legitimate computer software carries the "not fit for any purpose, we are not responsible if this formats your drive, steals your money, and kicks your dog" disclaimer in the EULA - with the exception of medical software, IIRC - and I imagine somewhere in the Nuke Your Computer EULA it says "this software WILL FUCK YOUR SYSTEM UP." I know, nonbinding, lol, etc. But still. :P
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
That's unfair. I don't think anyone in this thread has defended the act of downloading a piece of software and running it without ever having paid.
Downloading pirated software despite having paid for it at one point still constitutes piracy if it is against the EULA. You are still temporarily hosting it so that others may download it illegally. You are a distributor. Even with uploading turned off, you are showing support for the practice.