| WilliamWatts said: Public Key encryption of any quality would take at least a month of solid effort to crack. By that time the damage typically done by piracy would be averted. Obviously they would use encryption. Obviously they would ensure that the data recieved back from the server was not identical to the data sent. Not every packet sent would have to be relevant, but it would waste their time making them figure out each one. The victory is not perfect protection. The victory is in if they can slow down piracy for a few weeks and let themselves sell their products without the need to compete with pirated material. In addition to this, if the effort required is substantial enough then smaller releases would never be cracked due to the effort required unless the the release groups can develop a method which is portable to all games using this methodology. |
Wouldn't slow them down in the slightest. The client has access to the data both before it is encrypted, and after it is decrypted, meaning so does anyone with a decent debugger. There is no actual need to break the encryption! All I need to do is piece together how the unencrypted sent save maps to the unencrypted return save. Then all I do is strip out the encryption/decryption funcationallity in the client and get it to handle the unencrypted data directly, as does my spoofed server. Or I could just complete overridely the save/load function entirely and get them to use the exact same data anyway...
This is the fundanmental flaw with DRM. (Taking the old encryption metaphor) Alice wants to send a message to Bob without Cylde being able to read it. Trouble is with DRM, Bob and Cydle are the same person.
Edit: Just focusing on your last paragraph. They only generally get a one shot at delayed piracy. Unless they come up with a new scheme for every release (expensive and time consuming, unlikely to get the money back in sales), they might slow down the crackers for the first release that uses it, but once the inner workings are known, repeating the procedure is simple.
This also assumes the crackers don't get a copy before release (usually they do) and aren't working on cracking it before it comes out. Given how many games have pirated versions before or on the release date (hint: most of them), you really need to be on the ball to get that window of opportunity.
Also, the crackers do usually generate methods that can be tailored to future releases using the same copy protection (many copy protections also share similar traits, so even if they are different, figuring them out is a fairly generic process). This is why pirated releases appear so quickly. You're also forgetting that there is "glory" in the Scene for defeating copy protections and being the first to release the pirated game. Crackers also do this for the fun and challenge, so the "effort" required for smaller releases isn't an issue.
Essay Pro