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Line 2: [[File:copyprotection-stratego 3297.png\|link=Stratego\|frame\|[[Feelies\|Code wheel]]? F*, I downloaded the game!]] Even from the early days, the ease of making a perfect copy of software was a concern for gamemakers. Nintendo's experience with the Disk System add-on for the [[Nintendo Entertainment System\|Family Computer]] went so badly due to unlicensed copying (called "[[Pirate\|Piracy]]") that the company shied away from discs even long after all the other consoles had abandoned cartridges. They did flirt with optical media starting with the GameCube all the way to the Wii U, but reverted to solid-state cartridges not necessarily out of piracy concerns, but due to optical media being too clunky and fragile for a portable console such as the Switch. So from a fairly early time, ~~gamemakers~~game developers and hardware manufacturers employed a variety of mechanisms to prevent unlicensed copying. Many of these were poorly implemented, and tended to either be prone to locking a player out of playing a legal copy, being trivial to circumvent, or being so annoying that players either chose to play something else or pirate a cracked copy. One early method, called "key disc" protection, required that the game access its original disc during loading—metadata not normally preserved when a disk was duplicated was required to play the game. This was prone to failure, made games unplayable on newer machines (as this out-of-band data could not always be found by new hardware), and prevented the player from using a (perfectly legal) personal "backup" copy. Given that floppy disks had a typically short operational lifespan, this also had bad effects for long-term survival. Even a few CD-ROM based games used this method, intentionally introducing errors to the disk, then refusing to run if the error-correction mechanism did less work than expected. Line 24: Modern games simply fail to run if not authenticated. Earlier games tended to let you play a small part of the game, or play at a massive disadvantage, even if copy protection failed. In ''[[SimCity]]'', failing the copy protection would cause a non-stop stream of disasters to strike your city, making the game all but unplayable. (This sort of thing may have been intended, though, as another protection against people breaking the copy protection, since there was a chance someone idly examining the game before distributing it illegally might not have realized it had copy protection at all.) In theory, the only way to have fine-grained control over what end-users can or cannot do with software is to physically separate it from them via a client/server arrangement. In this setup, the client only serves as a front-end—sending player input to the server and outputting streaming audio and video from the server. With a competent IT staff, infringement all but ceases to exist, yet each player is at the mercy of the server's uptime and bandwidth requirements for streaming audio and video. ~~[http://onlive.com~~ OnLive] and Google Stadia, aboth now-defunct retail PC game streaming ~~platform~~platforms, inherently ~~has~~had this kind of copy-protection. With servers being overloaded and game companies bombing on a regular basis, this ends up being one of the least reliable systems in terms of gameplay and game longevity. The only thing that cannot be defeated is charging a monthly fee, and that really only works for massively multiplayer online games and other stuff that runs off of a central server. And sometimes even that isn't immune, especially when a popular game has private player-run servers start popping up, often implemented through reverse engineering of packets transmitted and received by the game client. This has the side effect of preserving multiplayer-only games which were otherwise made unplayable whenever the central servers for them go defunct. See also [[Digital Piracy Is Evil]], [[DRM]]. Line 36: The third game of the trilogy, ''Thief Of Fate'', had dimension-hopping as a crucial plot point. In order to travel from the main world to one of the seven other dimensions, the player had to not only cast the correct spell (see above), but then input the correct number from a three-layer card stock disc included with the game, similar to the Disney example given in this trope's description. * The ''[[Carmen Sandiego]]'' games each shipped with a large tome: a copy of that year's ''World Almanac and Book of Facts'', a history book or Fodor's guide, from which information could be requested. Several problems occurred with this: although it was intended to get kids interested in using an almanac, it wouldn't help if the book was lost at school, or if some schools used a ''newer'' edition of Fodor's (which meant that none of the hints corresponded to the correct pages, meaning going up in rank was impossible). * ''Hired Guns'' for the Amiga. The programmer responsible summed it up best himself: "One week I came up with a cunning plan. I figured anyone who cracked the game would take out the manual protection, play the game a bit and leave it at that. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140321071630/http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/DBA1/BloodWy.html But I included a routine that detects if the game has been altered, it then does nothing until you make a certain amount of saves at which point it messes up your save files, just when you're getting into the game.]" * [[Infocom]] tended to be among the cleverest in their integration of copy protection: for the most part, the game was simply unwinnable without the clues which the [[Feelies]] provided: In ''[[Leather Goddesses of Phobos]]'', the copy protection feelie was the ''map through the obligatory maze''. Considering that the maze was pretty much instantly deadly if you didn't do the right things in the right places, this was rather irritating when the map invariably got lost. A curious bit of copy protection was in Infocom's only romance game: ''Plundered Hearts''. The feelies in the game consist of facsimiles of the heroine's starting equipment, one of which is a banknote. The note shows the game's villain posing dramatically... but would you believe he's showing the solution to a puzzle? Grab his hat, try to grab the book he's carrying and press on the same part of the globe where he is and presto! Secret door! * Introversion Software's ''[[Uplink]]'' featured a code table printed in glossy black ink on black card, which could generally only be read where the light reflected off the ink. However, this was also turned on its head when the developers later admitted it was designed to be a nostalgic nod to old-school games, and it was admittedly useless as copy protection (seeing as the game was massively profitable anyway). They later posted a PDF containing the entire table [https://web.archive.org/web/20131103024840/http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink/faq-general.html on their site], saying it was not intended as a means of copy protection. * Several Level 9 games used a method called "Lenslok". Using a graphical pattern, a passphrase was rendered unreadable. A color filter provided with the game, similar to those in the Milton Bradley ''[[Jeopardy!]]'' games, could be placed against the screen to render the text legible, but this failed with exceptionally small or large monitors. * The ''[[Metal Gear]]'' solid has always featured copy protection measures: Line 94: * Eight-bit to 32-bit consoles including the Game Boy, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, (Super) Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64 used proprietary cartridges that were relatively expensive. But by the time of the Game Boy Advance, third parties introduced compatible cartridges for playing homemade GBA games (which could also be used for pirated games, wink wink nudge nudge). That's not all. The North American NES made use of a "lockout chip" system called the CIC, composed of a chip on the console that would reset the CPU if it did not detect a corresponding key chip on the game card. Nintendo patented the design of the key chip so that no one else could legally manufacture them. Depending on which sources you believe, the primary intent of the lock-out chip wasn't copy protection. Instead, the system was designed to allow Nintendo to keep tight control over who could release games for the platform and extract heavy licensing fees from third party developers. This was also the mechanism Nintendo used to enforce their infamous [[Censorship Bureau\|censorship and quality control regime]], keeping out the [[Custer's Revenge\|porn games]] and low quality software that [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983\|caused recurring PR nightmares for Atari.]] The copy protection was just a nice side effect... Some unlicensed games work around the lockout system either by using special cartridges that piggyback on another game ~~(like~~ ''a la'' [[Game Genie]], or through a charge pump designed to send a voltage spike which should knock the CIC offline; later revisions of the NES were no longer susceptible to said voltage spikes.) This led to companies such as American Video Entertainment to bundle their unlicensed games such as ''[[Wally Bear and the NO! Gang]]'' with instructions on how to modify their NES in case their console is of the newer revision.<ref>[http://www.thegameisafootarcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Wally-Bear-and-the-NO-Gang-Game-Manual.pdf Wally Bear and the NO! Gang - Nintendo NES - Manual]</ref> Also, Atari's Tengen division got themselves into a lawsuit by using social engineering and reverse engineering to create a key chip workaround called the "Rabbit Chip". Years later, the Rabbit would serve as a key to successfully reverse-engineering the CIC for homebrew and reproductions of popular games due to the presence of debug/test headers in the chip. While the top-loading NES ~~ommitted~~omitted the chips, a similar, albeit more sophisticated system was used on the Super NES and Nintendo 64. Bootleg games still thrived on the Super NES, though not as much as it was in the NES days (it also helps that the use of complex enhancement chips such as the Super FX meant that bootlegging the likes of ''[[Star Fox]]'' would be nigh impossible), and there were reportedly noonly a few bootleg cartridges for the N64 until recently when the CIC for it was reverse-engineered. There were however backup devices such as the Doctor V64 which used a legitimate N64 cartridge for authentication and loaded games off commodity CDs. While it was ostensibly marketed as an ~~inexepensive~~inexpensive development tool to test games on actual hardware, with a number of developers, notably [[Iguana Entertainment]], using Doctor V64s for developing their N64 games due to a shortage of official development kits from Nintendo, the V64 could easily be modified to run backups, and many resellers sold their V64s pre-modded. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo took umbrage and filed legal action to halt the sale of the V64. The Game Boy is an interesting example, as it was designed more as a passive ''trademark protection'' scheme that relied more on their merry band of lawyers than actively shutting out any bootlegs, the theory being that bootleggers and developers of unlicensed games wouldn't dare display the '''Nintendo®''' logo lest be sued for trademark infringement, which was more easily ~~enforcable~~enforceable in certain jurisdictions (This is also why some bootleg multicarts for the Game Boy simply have "GAME" embossed on the cart to dodge trademarks). If a copy of the logo was found on the cartridge ROM, the game loads, but using it as it is would make them an easy target for litigation. There is however a workaround taking advantage of a peculiarity on how the logo is checked and displayed: the Game Boy reads the boot logo twice--once to display it, and another to check if it matches the one on the boot ROM. Through this, unlicensed developers were able to subvert Nintendo's trademark protection by displaying their own logo on startup as a form of [[Plausible Deniability]], then load the Nintendo logo to pass the internal boot check.<ref>[http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87 Neo Fuji: "go go logo"]</ref> Ironically enough, [[Argonaut Games]] demonstrated this to Nintendo, and rather than sue Argonaut for breaking their protection scheme, they invited them to develop 3D games. And the rest, as they say, [[Star Fox\|is history]]. In a similar vein to Nintendo, Sega used a similar trademark enforcement system on the [[Sega Genesis\|Genesis]], aptly named "TradeMark Security System." The TMSS checks for the "SEGA" wordmark in various memory locations for a cartridge to boot, and if an unlicensed game has the necessary strings in the ROM, Sega can sue them for trademark infringement. This was however challenged in 1992 by Accolade when they were involved in a lawsuit concerning the use of Sega's trademarks on some of their games. The courts ruled in Accolade's favour, as the judges concluded that the required TMSS code took up 35 bytes while the rest of the game was wholly original content, and that Accolade's reverse-engineering to achieve compatibility with Sega hardware was a reasonable invocation of fair use. The [[Famicom Disk System]] also relied more on trademark enforcement than actual hardware or software-level protection. The disks, which were little more than a semi-custom variant of Mitsumi's Quick Disk, had '''NINTENDO''' molded at the bottom part of the disk, with the '''I''' and second '''N''' activating a switch which authenticated the game. [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]s ensued as with most pirated games, with the trademark being minced to "NINFENDO", "NINTEN", "NINJENDO", "INTEND" or even just "I N". Eventually, bootleggers simply just left indentations on the disk without the need to mold the Nintendo name or intentionally misspell it at all, making this scheme useless. Line 110: * And then Sony removed the OtherOS function from the PS3 back in April 2010 citing fears of ''security'', though piracy concerns were cited as the reason for its removal. Generally, people weren't pleased and even brought on lawsuits. And to rub salt into the wound, the removal of OtherOS further motivated hackers to bust the PS3 wide open.<ref>[https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-security-in-tatters Hackers leave PS3 security in tatters]</ref> * The Nintendo [[GameCube]] uses a proprietary 8 cm DVD based on the miniDVD. ** Contrary to popular belief, discs for game consoles do not spin in reverse. But Gamecube and Wii discs do use a slight variant of the DVD sector-level encoding. Unfortunately for Nintendo, Wii pirates disregarded the physical aspects of the copy protection and instead decided to attack the console's firmware, which had quite a few holes. Not to mention that the Wii is backwards-compatible with the GameCube, and as such homebrew for the latter will work for the Wii to some extent, albeit not taking advantage of the Wii's enhanced features. In addition, third-party video game accessory manufacturer Datel somehow managed to press discs which boot on an unmodified GameCube or Wii by adding sectors that would at least nominally satisfy the challenge-response authentication the GameCube or Wii is looking for with authentic discs. Datel also used the title ID from ''NHL Hitz 20-02'' for their unlicensed software, which led to Nintendo banning it on subsequent hardware revisions, which consequently led to ''NHL Hitz 20-02'' being unplayable, though it's a small price to pay considering it's just a throwaway annual sports title. * Sony has been fighting a long standing war against the Homebrew scene in the name of copy protection on the PSP. The Homebrew scene finds an exploit to allow unofficial software, Sony releases yet another patch (that they usually make mandatory in order to play the newest games) to fix it, and the cycle continues. One particular patch that was designed solely to fix an exploit that would require a user to load a specific game in order to "unlock" their PSP, succeeded in introducing an exploit that allowed users to unlock their [[PSP]]s without any game whatsoever. The 3.56 firmware update to the [[PlayStation 3]] marks the start of Sony's attempt to do the same thing (in addition to fixing the embarrassingly large security hole discovered not 2 months before the patch's release). How did it fare? Well, on the first release of the patch, it only succeeded in curbing (briefly) Call of Duty Modern Warfare hacks. It got cracked in under 24 hours, and that's NOT the worst news. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G40zYK-DbgY It would not work on Slim PS3s that had an upgraded hard drive], something that you are legally allowed to do. The second release of the patch only fixed the hard drive issue. Line 276: It should be noted that several companies, including Ubisoft, have previously tried to convince Microsoft and Sony to let them release console games that would require the player to be connected to Xbox Live or the Playstation Network at all times, irrespective of whether the game has any online elements. And despite the fact that such a mechanism would probably be far easier to implement on a console than on Windows, both Microsoft and Sony have smacked down such requests each and every time, on the grounds that they don't want to be responsible for the fallout that would inevitably happen. Let's reiterate: Sony, who ''love'' locking up everything harder than Fort Knox, using proprietary solutions wherever they can, and who have in the years attracted a lot of hatred due to their [[wikipedia:Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal\|boneheaded antipiracy measures]], [[Everyone Has Standards\|have rejected Ubisoft's project]]. You'd think this would be an eye opener in and of itself for Ubisoft... * That certainly didn't stop [[Capcom]] of all things [http://www.capcom-unity.com/ask_capcom/go/thread/view/7371/23158177/Why_does_Final_Fight_Double_Impact_require_me_to_be_in_PSN pulling off that dirty trick on the consoles]. At least the [http://www.giantbomb.com/news/bionic-commando-rearmed-2-psn-requires-an-internet-connection/2895/ Second time] they did it, they said it required a PSN login right on the description. (And it still only affects the [[Play Station 3]]) [https://web.archive.org/web/20110607032039/http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1172319p2.html That type of copy protection actually is allowed by Microsoft and Sony], but only on download titles—even then, however, the game has to go through a more rigorous validation process than usual, which is why most game developers don't do it. However, Ubisoft (among others) have repeatedly demanded to be allowed to implement this type of protection on ''disc-based'' games, which is silly when you consider that a significant amount of people still go without internet connections on their consoles. Fortunately, both Microsoft and Sony both have more sense than the developers in question, and still refuse to allow them to do so. Ubisoft tried to guard against the first ''[[Assassin's Creed (video game)\|Assassin's Creed I]]'' being leaked by deliberately introducing a performance-degrading bug into the code, to be removed only when the game was sent to be mass-produced. Unfortunately, they didn't actually tell anyone, so when the bugged version was inevitably leaked, it considerably hurt their sales because the pirates spread through word of mouth to potential legitimate buyers that the game had [[Porting Disaster\|terrible performance even on high-end computers.]] * ''SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3'' forces you to pay 20$ to play online on pirated '''or''' second hand copies. And it didn't take long to crack it, which makes this PSP copy protection irritating as it was preceded a month before by... * ...the initial Japanese release of ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep]]''. Why? At the time of the game's release, no one fully cracked the 6.20 firmware, which the game requires. The game was released in early January; it took until early March for a major cracking progress. Yeah. * ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]: The Battle For Middle Earth'' contained a rather unique form of anti-piracy. About ten minutes in, if the game decided our copy was pirated, your entire army would self destruct resulting in a game over. Caused some problems because bugs resulted in the game doing this to even legal copies sometimes. * ''Bonetown'', an [[H-game]] by western gamers, has been noted for being "Uncrackable" despite using only Securom. The big problem? The Securom was rather archaic and was quietly subverted once the Retail Version was released (aka the physical copy) rather then the Direct Download version * [[Spirit Tracks]] had this when you got on the train. The controls for it wouldn't show up so you would end up crashing into another train over and over again in the tutorial section. This was patched.