How to protect your game from pirates?

[karguzar]

I am really worried. Can someone explain me how to protect games from pirates? Is there anyway to stop copying games? Waiting for your answer...

 

[Shaz]

You could ... search. Not like the topic hasn't come up before


The short story is, there is no way to completely protect your game - you can put in measures to make it more difficult, and the 'casual' hackers might buy it if they're really interested in playing (but then they're probably people who would have bought it anyway). But if someone really wants to hack your game, they'll find a way to do it.


Whatever you do, don't make it more difficult for paying customers to play your game, in an attempt to stop hackers who are probably more interested in the thrill of breaking your DRM than in actually playing your game.

 

[bgillisp]

For more on what Shaz said and bad DRM, look up the videogame Spore on Amazon. 3,341 reviews, two star average, mainly because the DRM they implemented ticked off the paying customers. It was so bad that the practice of posting bad reviews just over DRM was called "Sporing" a game for a long time after the game came out.

 

[Nathan Frost]

I have a method I use where I store everything into a single exe to make standard hackers for RM useless, now obviously again, if anyone want's to really access your game's files, they will find any way to achieve it. But, at least the way I do it prevents any DRM discouragement because it isn't really a DRM, it just stops people from accessing the regular encrypted file with any RM hack. Send me a PM sometime, I'll be able to do it for you. You can even send me the game locked, I don't need to touch the game files to do it. Just make sure everything you want in it, is in it. weather it's fonts, or RTP.

 

[Tsukihime]

I have a method I use where I store everything into a single exe to make standard hackers for RM useless, now obviously again, if anyone want's to really access your game's files, they will find any way to achieve it. But, at least the way I do it prevents any DRM discouragement because it isn't really a DRM, it just stops people from accessing the regular encrypted file with any RM hack. Send me a PM sometime, I'll be able to do it for you. You can even send me the game locked, I don't need to touch the game files to do it. Just make sure everything you want in it, is in it. weather it's fonts, or RTP.

Is the idea similar to how people make portable apps?

 

[Nathan Frost]

Is the idea similar to how people make portable apps?

Correct, but I've gotten it to the point where I've tried pulling it up with various task managers and all it returns is the executable process itself. I'm sure where there's a will there's a way. But it's at least better then RM's standard protection and it's not stored in your app data folder either.

 

[ロリ先輩]

There are plenty of basic ways, but you won't stop any crackers from getting it- this is true in most/all cases/for anything. Even the encryption that banks and credit cards use can be broken by brute force (given, it'll take a few million years with current computing).


What you can do is to give more incentive for people to buy the game, like giving a single use account locked key that unlocks items in the game, site, or gives exclusives like soundtrack/art/physical goods.

 

[Tsukihime]

Correct, but I've gotten it to the point where I've tried pulling it up with various task managers and all it returns is the executable process itself. I'm sure where there's a will there's a way. But it's at least better then RM's standard protection and it's not stored in your app data folder either.

If the package itself uses its own layer of protection that required you to break that before getting at the contained data, that would be pretty nice.


Maybe you can send me the instructions as well

 

[Nathan Frost]

If the package itself uses its own layer of protection that required you to break that before getting at the contained data, that would be pretty nice.

Maybe you can send me the instructions as well

Send me a PM, and I'll discuss more with you.

 

[Faye Valentine]

Use Anti-RGSS decyrpter (it's a program). No one will use reverse engineering to an RM game lol 

Or just use Molebox Pro and compact everything to a single .exe and that's it. You don't have to worry hahaha.

 

[Nathan Frost]

Use Anti-RGSS decyrpter (it's a program). No one will use reverse engineering to an RM game lol 

Or just use Molebox Pro and compact everything to a single .exe and that's it. You don't have to worry hahaha.

 That's a problem for commercial users, look at the terms if you don't by a $1400 license.

Demo version WITHOUT activation has the following limitations:

• Packed application is bound to your PC by hardware ID.
• You are not allowed to distribute programs packed with unregistered version of MoleBox.
• Packed application shows a reminder window on startup.

Demo version WITH activation has the following limitations:

• You are not allowed to distribute programs packed with unregistered version of MoleBox.
• Packed application shows a reminder window on startup.

That's why I was offering my services to do it, as I've already paid for my license (but not with MoleBox).

 

[GRIMMJOW]

As a little developer you can't do very much about it and you shouldn't even try to, it's just a waste of time for you. Look at plattforms like gog, steam etc.year after year they're getting more successful, so this means people are going to buy your game if its actually good. pirating isn't neccessarly a bad thing for you either, a lot of developers even benefit of it. Not every pirated download of your game means that you lost a possible copy of your game. you should keep that in mind.

 

[Rendar-]

As a little developer you can't do very much about it and you shouldn't even try to, it's just a waste of time for you. Look at plattforms like gog, steam etc.year after year they're getting more successful, so this means people are going to buy your game if its actually good. pirating isn't neccessarly a bad thing for you either, a lot of developers even benefit of it. Not every pirated download of your game means that you lost a possible copy of your game. you should keep that in mind.

Sure, it probably doesn't mean that you lost a sale, but it is rather annoying seeing a game that you worked hard on being played and distributed in a way you didn't intend.

 

[amerk]

Not to mention, it's potentially confusing for a consumer who happens to come across the "free" version of your game and may not be aware it's pirated. I still read comments from people who are shocked that RPG Maker now costs money when it used to be free, not aware that the 2K and 2K3 they're referencing is in fact pirated and was never free at all. In this day and age of freeware games (especially when it's an RM game), it's reasonable to assume a certain level of confusion will occur amongst consumers who thought a game was free when it was not.

And even if a consumer was aware and planned to legitimately buy the game, if the same game is dangled in front of them as being free and they're fairly confident it's not infected with a virus, or that they're anti-virus software is top notch if it is, you can't tell me a good fraction of those consumers won't be tempted and get the pirated version instead, even if under the false pretense that they'll still buy the game at a later time if they like what they see.

So yeah, I can sympathize with the commercial developers. Pirating the game may not amount to a big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially since the pirate wouldn't have purchased the game anyways. But posting the pirated game and then luring a potential crowd of would-be buyers is a big deal, since that single lost sale begins to add up with each person who chooses to download the pirated version instead of buying the legal one. It's even more of a concern for indie developers without the know-how and resources that a bigger gaming company will have to fight this.

Edit:

To add one more thought on this, I do realize there are some people who will download a pirated game, like what they see, and then go off to buy it. So to some degree, it is a valid point. However, it's really no different than reading reviews, watching some brief play-throughs, or even playing the demo and then deciding whether or not to make a purchase. So even without a pirated version, those people who would go out and buy a copy of the game would probably already do so with the other legal avenues they have.

However....

You can't be naive to think that every consumer who downloads a pirated game will then go out and buy a copy, whether or not they intended to in the first place. So even if you had 10 potential customers who each downloaded a pirated game, and only 5 of them decided to buy it afterwards, that's still 5 missed sales opportunity on the remaining 5 who didn't go out and buy the game. We can't know if those remaining 5 would have bought the game had there not been a pirated version, but it's reasonable to assume that some of them probably would have. It's pretty much guaranteed that pirated versions will almost always cost the developer sales more so than if there weren't a pirated version, even if a fraction of those people decide to buy it afterwards.

 

[Rendar-]

Far Cry 4 just disabled some graphics feature to piraters who then proceeded to complain about the lack of it. There were TONS of people complaining on reddit and the like, and they were like hey, way to tell everyone you just pirated it. They knew most of these people weren't going to actually spend the money on the game.

With smaller, cheaper commercial titles, however, it's not as much of a concrete rule that piraters won't actually make a purchase.

 

[Tsukihime]

As a little developer you can't do very much about it and you shouldn't even try to, it's just a waste of time for you. Look at plattforms like gog, steam etc.year after year they're getting more successful, so this means people are going to buy your game if its actually good.at in mind.

How is piracy relevant to platforms like gog or steam?

 

[amerk]

He's implying that in spite of piracy going on, games still appear to be successful on these platforms, so piracy isn't hurting sales. But the reality is, nobody but the developer knows just how successful a game is after it's been pirated, even if said game happens to be on any of these other platforms.

 

[Shelby]

Not that worried it seems...

Pirates are everywhere, in this time of tech and well sloth they are just everywhere, I hate it to and view them as scum but think about it, the DRM to "protect" your games can cause problems to, no DRM is hack proof.

And since AAA are being hacked all the time a simple Google search would have answered your question. If AAA Devs have to deal with it so do we. Just have fun here finish making your profile for the love of god and have a nice day BD

 

[Gavitron]

The best possible way to protect your game from pirates is to make it reasonably priced, and extremely easy to buy. The closest the industry has come to actually stopping pirates is by requiring the user to log in online to play the game, like Diablo 3. Eventually, everything is cracked. DRM will hurt sales more than piracy.

 

[Clord]

Blizzard uses server side data for extra protection. All items, monsters, etc outside of their audio and visual assets are server side, even the AI.