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Turning a corner? Pirate groups fail to crack copy protection
- Thread starter Zenith
- Start date
gregor7777
Banned
theBishop said:
This is my opinion on the matter as well. That, and the cost of replacement parts for testing is probably quite high, making tinkering around with the unit much more costly.
Draft said:
Well, yeah, but it's a) not invasive, doesnt detract from legitimate users game experience, and b) has been cracked for a very long time now. The only thing the Steam DRM is doing is making the publishers feel good and preventing Joe Blow from hitting copy paste.
bee
Member
i mentioned this a while back and someone wrongly argued it had been cracked cos there was a release on a torrent site..., it remains 100% uncracked as has been said
the interesting thing to note here is, only 3 games have used this protection bioshock, mass effect and alone in the dark. but bioshock and mass effect weren't cracked (working) by "teh scene" they got cracked by random anonymous nobodies joining together just because of how high profile the games were but in this case the game is much less popular and they're not helping and hence no crack
hope all games use this protection from now on i've got zero issues with it personally and it certainly worked better than the protection on the 360/ps2/versions
the interesting thing to note here is, only 3 games have used this protection bioshock, mass effect and alone in the dark. but bioshock and mass effect weren't cracked (working) by "teh scene" they got cracked by random anonymous nobodies joining together just because of how high profile the games were but in this case the game is much less popular and they're not helping and hence no crack
hope all games use this protection from now on i've got zero issues with it personally and it certainly worked better than the protection on the 360/ps2/versions
Laughterjones
Banned
Draft said:
Digital dist with drm is not bad.
It's my GRAW game which 9/10 times gives me the securom error before the game starts which is the pain.
This is what gets me. ME at best buy is $40 while digital it is still $50. I know that's b/c of some arrangement retailers have with the publishers but hey. Digital dist has been marketed as the cheaper way to purchase games. Hopefully digital dist keeps growing. I <3 steam.
On a side note:
Bioshock over steam is $15 this weekend only!
Bioshock over steam is $15 this weekend only!
Bioshock over steam is $15 this weekend only!
Tsukasa said:
fixed. and those were done by indies who got bored of posting "crack plz", not by the groups.
I'm afraid not only is Steam cracked but it's done in such a way that you can download Steam games FOR FREE. that's everything from Half Life 2 to Darwinia. kind of a backfire seeing as one of the main reasons for Steam's creation was security and now it's easier to pirate than non-Steam games.
edit:
precisely.
TheHeretic
Banned
Mainstream torrent sites like mininova aren't where these cracks are first listed. Both Bioshock and Mass Effect were cracked in about a week.
Zenith said:
Way to be subtle, lol.
Yeah, I was reading into one of the older models of what your talking about. It appears that all of the Steam games are on a fancy HTTP server, and it relies on the client to download or not download the games.
Regardless, I am more in favor of PC games going to something like Steam than the Bioshock DRM. The problem with these custom rolled DRM solutions is we're trusting the publisher (who wants $) to pick a non-intrusive solution (possibly costing them $). Sony had a nice rootkit a few years back; Bioshock DRM was pretty bad before they let you do more activations and such, too.
wolfmat
Confirmed Asshole
Probably kind of off-topic. And the best stuff is post-crackers-democoders-split, which would be around 1990.itxaka said:
Still, one of the more famous ones on the ST is The DNA Demo. Kind of hard to appreciate though without an actual ST humming in front of you.
My favorite ST demo EVER would be M Demo 3 by AN Cool, simply because the tracks are stellar. Somebody filmed his monitor while running it on STeEm, but that doesn't do it justice one bit.
Jochen Hippel made the music for a lot of cracktros and then went professional. One of his best soundtracks ever was for Wings of Death, both on the ST and Amiga (although I prefer the ST version because it's chiptune-y).
Probably deserves / already has its own topic.
Edit: Megaballs demos were one big differenciating factor between the ST and the Amiga scene for a long time - the Amiga guys went there first, the ST scene topped their stuff, and that went back and forth for a few years.
Can't believe I'm still finding this interesting.
wolfmat
Confirmed Asshole
Recently I wanted to install the Spore Creature Creator (Full Version) on my dad's machine to show it to my niece, who was staying there for a few days.
The game can't be played without an online connection, most likely to activate it on first run.
So I couldn't start it after installing, despite having purchased it - my dad simply has no internet.
The installer asked explicitly for my serial, I provided it and still couldn't start the damn thing.
That is just wrong. If that's the only way to prevent piracy, I'm not happy.
The game can't be played without an online connection, most likely to activate it on first run.
So I couldn't start it after installing, despite having purchased it - my dad simply has no internet.
The installer asked explicitly for my serial, I provided it and still couldn't start the damn thing.
That is just wrong. If that's the only way to prevent piracy, I'm not happy.
wmat said:
Awesome.
It´s the music from Hybris on the amiga!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YlsHG0Zdrf0&feature=related
wmat said:
That's not the only way to prevent piracy, that is the reason for piracy.
Well, most of the reason. Others pirate for a quick demo, or to try a B rated game they wouldn't buy anyways. The actual amount of people who pirate games they would otherwise buy to save money is a great minority of the "pirates".
It's a real shame that legitimate users who download the no-cd cracks for convenience get lumped in with the rest of the pirate statistics. Long live stardock (SSOE, no DRM).
wolfmat
Confirmed Asshole
As reparations, another Megaballs demo.itxaka said:
frontieruk
Member
wmat said:
I´m perplexed as I always thougth that Estrayk was the one that made the amiga music for Hybris but I don´t remember him saying that he was on TLB. I know he was on PDX, FL, Empire, Razor, etc.. but not on that one and the comments on the video explain that the composer is Chrispy Noodle.
Time to dig some more info.
Thanks for the videos! I get some demos to check out.
It will be cracked. Its a shit game that no one cares about but it will be cracked when someone is bored. Also DRM can go fuck it self, i hate that shit. It doesn't do much in terms of stopping pirates and its fucking annoying for customers that bought the game.
edit: :lol nvm, it has been cracked already.
edit: :lol nvm, it has been cracked already.
The Friendly Monster
Member
Arrrrrrr.Windu said:
laserbeam said:
I think that's the point though. OP was about the scene. Releases are to meet certain criteria or the thing gets nuked. A major nfo site lacks the crack. It wasn't distributed through normal scene means.
Independent releases though do sort of contradict the point of the OP though. Maybe Bioshock wasn't crack to scene standards for 4 or 5 weeks, but there was a way around the DRM before the non-nuked scene release.
FLEABttn said:
It's because it´s not a crack. The protection is still there undefeated, the "patch" fools the activation. Even there are groups stating that the patch is not a crack at all as it doesn´t remove the protection.
Probably they are still working on it (it's not easy to crack this DRM) or they just don't give a damn and are using internal patches not fully working.
I love how the OP tries to paint hackers as these evil, low-life characters with no skill or organization. Why not just write that they drink grog and wear an eye-patch? :lol
Many of the people responsible for hacking through DRMs are very talented programmers. It's true that their work is bastardized sometimes by certain small "groups" online, but you can't have it both ways.
Either the "scene" is pitiful and meaningless or it is the scourge of the gaming world and single-handedly driving video game development into the ground. Unless of course, you're suggesting that the vast detrimental impact of pirating of video games is actually being perpetrated by some other unknown party?
Many of the people responsible for hacking through DRMs are very talented programmers. It's true that their work is bastardized sometimes by certain small "groups" online, but you can't have it both ways.
Either the "scene" is pitiful and meaningless or it is the scourge of the gaming world and single-handedly driving video game development into the ground. Unless of course, you're suggesting that the vast detrimental impact of pirating of video games is actually being perpetrated by some other unknown party?
itxaka said:
Its actually a very simple DRM. Mass Effects was defeated instantly basically. What the Developers did though was install DRM checks at key points in the game so if the initial check was cracked they could snag people later on.
They groups had to go back and remove those functions from the game so it wouldnt check again later on.
As a game though Mass Effect was epic enough that normal every day programmers hit the ground running trying to get passed it. Alone in the dark is a piece of shit that nearly no one cares about thus there is little to no effort to crack it.
If the DRM for Mass Effect did anything it increased some sales. Watching the progress between my play sessions I saw alot of people give in and buy it.
FLEABttn said:
Pirates somehow assume a biased no loss situation. They either win by cracking or they simply haven't cracked it yet. The first month is the most important, if publishers can survive that then the threat of lost sales is decreased, so this is indeed a win for publishers. But almost nothing can count as a formal pirate loss.
theBishop said:
totally agree, I used to read the forum where a lot of people who figured out all the PSP stuff hung out and they were totally only in it for homebrew, they reverse engineered all the system calls and everything like that and were very much against anyone talking about possible piracy uses of their work.
i even noticed some lame ass 'scene' group who were constantly promising to have a game eboot loader out 'soon' cut and pasting the code/exploits the homebrew guys were coming up with verbatim and passing it off as their own 'hacking', following the homebrew guys progress but a day or two behind... i think it was WAB or alonetrio or something..
Woo-Fu
Banned
theBishop said:
It isn't systemwars. I'm a sony fanboy if I'm a console fanboy of any type.
The reason the xbox had a robust mod/piracy scene? Every x-box came with a hard drive, whereas the ps2 and the 'cube did not.
If the PS3 is so great about supporting homebrew then why on earth is the graphics hardware still locked up tight?
Serious piracy is a business. The ps3 is not the most profitable market at this time, simply put. That isn't systemwars, it is fact.
is the 360 cracked? last i heard you could chip the drive or something to allow it to play copied DVDs of games, but i think they screwed that with a firmware update?
theres a difference between being cracked for piracy and for homebrew though, just allowing cloned discs of games is easier than arbitrary code which is what the homebrewers want.
i'm kind of surprised there isnt a modchip for ps3
theres a difference between being cracked for piracy and for homebrew though, just allowing cloned discs of games is easier than arbitrary code which is what the homebrewers want.
i'm kind of surprised there isnt a modchip for ps3
wolfmat
Confirmed Asshole
You can flash your DVD drive in some way to make playing burned DVDs possible or something. You need some additional PC hardware though, if I recall correctly.panda21 said:
I think there has been no update fix coming from MS recently, kiddies still boast about their burnt copies online in the 'underground' forums.
BishopLamont
Banned
AitD's protection is relatively new, and it's not really a blockbuster anymore, it basically boils down to the scene thinking it's not worth their effort to really crack it as fast as possible.