Friday, March 10, 2006
Opinion: The Problem with Protection
PC Gamer editor-in-chief Greg Vederman looks at anti-piracy solutions and how their potency has caused concerns among consumers that they're sometimes overly troublesome. PC Gamer also profiles a few of the leading products used by game publishers...
Image Software piracy has become a huge problem for game publishers — one that, according to the SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association), costs the software industry somewhere between $11 and $12 billion in revenue each year. Game companies have grown understandably frustrated and are constantly on the lookout for better ways to protect themselves.
Despite years of combating piracy, by the late ’80s and early ’90s, the games industry could do little more than ask nicely that people not pirate their wares. These days, however, copy-protection software is ubiquitous, and any PC game bought at retail is going to have it embedded on the game disc(s) in one form or another.
I’m okay with that in theory, but some of these anti-piracy software programs are so potent that they cause issues for legitimate game buyers. One of the leading brands, StarForce, is notorious for not only making it difficult for a small percentage of legitimate users to load up StarForce-protected games, but also for leaving potentially problem-causing StarForce software behind on your PC, even after you’ve deleted the game it was protecting. And this isn’t just some story that I’ve read about online or in emails from readers. No, it happened to me.
Last year, my work PC suddenly began blue-screening (crashing) any time I popped an audio CD into either of my two optical drives. I went online and learned that other people were having this problem and that it appeared to be StarForce-related. Deleting my StarForce-protected games did nothing. I had to run a StarForce-removal utility before my system — filled only with legal, licensed software — could play audio CDs again.
Prove It
StarForce Technologies, the company that makes StarForce, seems to think that problems like mine aren’t real — or that, if they are, they’re happening only to pirates. Not too long ago, they even launched a contest on their website (www.star-force.com) called “Prove It!” If you could prove to them that StarForce had physically damaged your optical drive (a long-standing internet rumor), SFT would pay you $10,000. According to them, no one proved it.
The contest was a bit of a red herring, though, because I don’t think StarForce is physically damaging drives. My guess is that the rumor was started by people who were having problems similar to mine, but who were unable to resolve them because they didn’t know how to fully remove StarForce.
And why don’t people know how to do that? I have to lay the blame at the feet of certain game publishers. Companies that use potentially problem-causing anti-piracy software could do a much better job of getting out in front of these sorts of issues and helping customers resolve them. (Including a FAQ sheet in each game box would go a long way.) As it stands, gamers sometimes run into issues, have no idea why, they can’t return the game they just bought because their store doesn’t accept returns (because retailers are also concerned about losing money to piracy), and in the end a lot of people are needlessly left out in the cold.
This month's PC Gamer offers a story that puts the largest, most widely used anti-piracy software under the microscope (a brief version of it appears below). It explains how the software works and offers solutions on how to make it play nice with your PC if you encounter difficulties. Be sure to read it.
As for the larger issue of what happens when you’ve got an industry that is justifiably concerned about losing billions of dollars and consumers who are justifiably concerned about anti-piracy software making their lives difficult, well, you can bet that over the next several years, we’re going to see even more games going the secure online-distribution route. For now, that’s the only fool-proof piracy solution (that’s also relatively headache-free for consumers) that anyone has been able to come up with.
source:http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2445&Itemid=2
Image Software piracy has become a huge problem for game publishers — one that, according to the SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association), costs the software industry somewhere between $11 and $12 billion in revenue each year. Game companies have grown understandably frustrated and are constantly on the lookout for better ways to protect themselves.
Despite years of combating piracy, by the late ’80s and early ’90s, the games industry could do little more than ask nicely that people not pirate their wares. These days, however, copy-protection software is ubiquitous, and any PC game bought at retail is going to have it embedded on the game disc(s) in one form or another.
I’m okay with that in theory, but some of these anti-piracy software programs are so potent that they cause issues for legitimate game buyers. One of the leading brands, StarForce, is notorious for not only making it difficult for a small percentage of legitimate users to load up StarForce-protected games, but also for leaving potentially problem-causing StarForce software behind on your PC, even after you’ve deleted the game it was protecting. And this isn’t just some story that I’ve read about online or in emails from readers. No, it happened to me.
Last year, my work PC suddenly began blue-screening (crashing) any time I popped an audio CD into either of my two optical drives. I went online and learned that other people were having this problem and that it appeared to be StarForce-related. Deleting my StarForce-protected games did nothing. I had to run a StarForce-removal utility before my system — filled only with legal, licensed software — could play audio CDs again.
Prove It
StarForce Technologies, the company that makes StarForce, seems to think that problems like mine aren’t real — or that, if they are, they’re happening only to pirates. Not too long ago, they even launched a contest on their website (www.star-force.com) called “Prove It!” If you could prove to them that StarForce had physically damaged your optical drive (a long-standing internet rumor), SFT would pay you $10,000. According to them, no one proved it.
The contest was a bit of a red herring, though, because I don’t think StarForce is physically damaging drives. My guess is that the rumor was started by people who were having problems similar to mine, but who were unable to resolve them because they didn’t know how to fully remove StarForce.
And why don’t people know how to do that? I have to lay the blame at the feet of certain game publishers. Companies that use potentially problem-causing anti-piracy software could do a much better job of getting out in front of these sorts of issues and helping customers resolve them. (Including a FAQ sheet in each game box would go a long way.) As it stands, gamers sometimes run into issues, have no idea why, they can’t return the game they just bought because their store doesn’t accept returns (because retailers are also concerned about losing money to piracy), and in the end a lot of people are needlessly left out in the cold.
This month's PC Gamer offers a story that puts the largest, most widely used anti-piracy software under the microscope (a brief version of it appears below). It explains how the software works and offers solutions on how to make it play nice with your PC if you encounter difficulties. Be sure to read it.
As for the larger issue of what happens when you’ve got an industry that is justifiably concerned about losing billions of dollars and consumers who are justifiably concerned about anti-piracy software making their lives difficult, well, you can bet that over the next several years, we’re going to see even more games going the secure online-distribution route. For now, that’s the only fool-proof piracy solution (that’s also relatively headache-free for consumers) that anyone has been able to come up with.
source:http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2445&Itemid=2
# posted by dark master : 3/10/2006 09:59:00 AM
