dominions copy protection - Page 3

LordArioch · #21 October 13th, 2003, 09:26 PM

The harder you make a game to play illegally, the harder people will work to break through your anti-piracy setup.
It's probably best not to try, because all trying does is waste trouble and usually make things more annoying for people who bought the game, while just providing more challenging practice to the software pirates.

They're pretty through too...I know people that know about that sort of thing...and I'm pretty sure there was even a warez Version of Dominions I. Although it's really sad if anybody got that...
Traitors to Illwinter! Destroy them all!

Gandalf Parker · #22 October 13th, 2003, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by LordArioch:
The harder you make a game to play illegally, the harder people will work to break through your anti-piracy setup.
It's probably best not to try, because all trying does is waste trouble and usually make things more annoying for people who bought the game, while just providing more challenging practice to the software pirates.

They're pretty through too...I know people that know about that sort of thing...and I'm pretty sure there was even a warez Version of Dominions I. Although it's really sad if anybody got that...
Traitors to Illwinter! Destroy them all!

Most of them arent efforts to stop the pirates. Its efforts to stop the copiers. Casual copys by good buddies are the big target. Pirates are just a side game.

LordArioch · #23 October 13th, 2003, 09:56 PM

Yeah...foolish me. I read down to your post after posting that...that does make a certain amount of sense too. But depending on how causual they are it really doesnt take much to stop casual copiers.
Cd-check requirements are especially annoying...they dont really stop anybody with a cd burner and they require actually keeping the cd accesible.

PvK · #24 October 13th, 2003, 10:12 PM

Hmm. It's too bad though to not be able to, say, play a LAN game with several computers using one CD-key.

The network host thing is a good solution for network games. Doesn't work for single-player. However, you can check whether more than one user is using the host network at the same time, and then deactivate that key.

Ah well.

PvK

Pocus · #25 October 14th, 2003, 01:25 AM

The Shrapnel official policy is to not have a too strong copy protection scheme in their games, to not bother honests customers. What would you prefer to see?

[ October 13, 2003, 12:30: Message edited by: Pocus ]

Pocus · #26 October 14th, 2003, 01:26 AM

The option 'need to enter a cd key upon DL a patch' imply that the patch upgrade your Doms Version on the fly, and is not a stand alone patch.

Otherwise, it would be too easy to get a copy of the patch, then distribute it on the internet...

(this is the Galciv scheme)

[ October 13, 2003, 12:31: Message edited by: Pocus ]

Morkul · #27 October 14th, 2003, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pocus:
I bought gal civ, have you? I know for sure that the major patches are distributed without much protections, but the incremental patches are only downloadable thru stardock utility, which downloads the components and then upgrade your game on the fly. I would be very surprised to see incremental patches on P2P servers or on warez sites, as it would asks for an hacked copy of the utility.

Well all you need to do is make a copy of the files before the patch and then make a binary differance with the patched files and make a deltapatch of it. So i wouldent be suprised if you where finding incremental patches on wares sites or P2P servers.

/Morkul