Thinking - Copy Protection

The gaming world is seeing another case of Big Aggro at the moment, centred around the atrocity being inflicted on paying customers by copy protection ...

In particular, it's a game called Assassins Creed 2, which raises the bar just a little bit more.

There's always been a certain amount of copy protection involved with software, the problem has been coming with the publishers increasingly treating their paying customers like criminals. The measures put in to allow protection of intellectual property used to be fairly simple, being limited to typing in codes from manuals or just making it difficult to copy stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to publishers attempting to protect their intellectual property, I just object to the ways they've been going about it. I think I've written a few things about this before too ... (faint feelings of deja vu !) The crime that first really got me irritated with copy protection just so happens to be from the same publisher as the latest atrocity, so I think it's time to give an example or two :

Starforce copy protection. Ubisoft used this a fair bit and it worked by sitting between Windows and the cd drives. It would intercept the data passing between to allow it to authenticate the disc correctly. Fairy nuff. Except when it disabled the copy protection employed by other publishers games. Oh, it also disabled my USB hub for some strange reason.

Copy protection measures are fair enough, except when they adversely affect the overall running of a PC. And as PCs tend to be a festering cesspool of mismatched software, it's an insanely difficult thing to prevent unanticipated interaction between all the garbage that gets left behind in a PC.

That's a fairly minor irritant though compared to what's been put on Assassins Creed 2. What's happened here is that when the game is running, it'll phone home every 20 seconds or so to see if everything's ok. If your internet happens to sneeze, the copy protect will pull the trigger on a gun that'll unceremoniously dump you back to Windows.

However, having to be online permanently is not the biggest beef people have with this system. It's no problem at all to me as my internet is always on and typically always active (I stay logged in to Messenger all the time). No, the issue is "what happens when the authentication servers go inactive ?" Well, you've paid £30 for a game that you can no longer play. This is a big deal, as shown by me still playing games written and released 15 years ago. Will these authentication servers be around in 15 years ? Somehow I doubt it.

What's the alternative ? Well, there are two. The first is to wait for the crackers who have almost certainly broken through or bypassed this system by now. They then put the game data online (torrent sites) where people then illegally download it without the protection. No protection, no problem.

The second alternative is the one I've chosen ever since I realised the Starforce protection was causing me problems. I've basically boycotted Ubisoft and avoided all their games. Vote with your feet, it's the only language the money people understand. (Although that won't get through to the Union people determined to bring down British Airways, which will take jobs away from their members)

Either way, the people behind the copy protection don't get any money.

There's all sorts of other arguments around copy protection. One reason people copy is because the games are more expensive now. That's certainly why I've avoided getting Modern Warfare 2, £40 for a PC game is a rip off in my mind. If the crackers weren't so good at getting around copy protection, we may have seen games stay around the £15-£20 mark. Dunno about that argument, because console games still cost more than PC games.

So what's the way forward ? Ubisoft's method with AC 2 is a bit too draconian, just have a look at the review scores people are giving it on Amazon. USB sticks as dongles ? Could be and it wouldn't add much to the cost to make per unit. The crackers will get through that as well though eventually.

Me - I've been thinking Console ... Although when I look at them, I'm not seeing enough interesting games to warrant the starter cost of a £250 purchase of an Xbox. I definitely know what I don't appreciate, which is being treated like a criminal by the people who want my money. I'll keep the cash in my pocket ta very much.

The games market is struggling enough at the moment, I suspect PC gaming will be just MMOs in a few years. It'll be curious to see how things go.