Copy Protection: Difference between revisions
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** The playstation mechanism was actually very clever, and made it completely impossible to burn a disc that would pass the protection ever. Unfortunately for Sony, there were points exposed where people could solder a chip in to override the attempt to read the signature and replace it with a valid one. People COULD press pirated discs once they figured out how the protection really worked, though, yielding the boot disc. Worse yet, it turns out that by using a single valid Playstation game and some quick swapping of the burned disc any reasonably dexterous person could play burned discs on a completely unmodded console. It takes some practice, but it's not that difficult.
*** The final evolution of this "swap trick" was the production of kits containing stickers to hold down the "lid open" sensors (so the console would not try to perform the security test again when the lid was opened to swap the discs), and boot discs that would pass the copy protection check, then stop the disc from spinning and wait patiently until the start button was pressed (so the user could swap in another disc at their leisure).
*** Before the PS3s dropped backward compatibility altogether, this bit Sony on the ass - they had a hell of a time trying to read PS2 discs, to the point where most of the last-gen library was bugged out or failed entirely while playing on a [[
▲*** More "Security Through Obscurity" (or maybe just Everything is Cooler in Black) than anything else. The black coating wasn't technically ''necessary''; a number of games were released on bog-standard silver CDs. However, the black undersides did make a lot of people (apparently including the previous commenter) think that the discs were more special than they actually were.
▲*** Before the PS3s dropped backward compatibility altogether, this bit Sony on the ass - they had a hell of a time trying to read PS2 discs, to the point where most of the last-gen library was bugged out or failed entirely while playing on a [[Play Station 3]].
*** And then Sony removed the OtherOS function from the PS3 back in April 2010, citing fears of ''security'' (or rather, ''piracy''. When the console is booted into Linux, it could now be used to run copied versions of discs). Generally, people weren't pleased and even brought on lawsuits.
* The Nintendo
** 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.
* 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
** The 3.56 firmware update to the [[
* ''[[EarthBound]]'' memorably has a vast array of copy protection mechanisms of surprising intricacy and thoroughness. For its first layer, it has a checksum that could detect whether the game was running from a copied cartridge or being booted from a cartridge-copying device;<ref>Emulating the game does not set it off unless you're using a ''really'' shitty emulator.</ref> if the mechanism did not check out, the game threw up an antipiracy warning screen at the beginning and did not play any further. If the protection was cracked, a checksum mechanism would detect the change, and the game spawned [[Zerg Rush|many more enemies than usual]] - some even in places they didn't belong! - in an attempt to discourage further playing. If the player persevered through this or cracked this second layer, however, an even nastier surprise awaited: the game would freeze and severely glitch after the first part of the [[Final Boss]] fight against Giygas... and when you reset, you would find ''all your saves deleted!''.
** These copy protection schemes sometimes trigger on legit cartridges, likely due to wear and tear over time. Although unrelated to copy protection, the same wear and tear can cause the game to run entirely in black and white as well.
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** Did we mention that, despite having a perfectly good copy protection system built in to Steam, most third party publishers keep their own, more intrusive systems in the version of their games that they sell on Steam anyway? At least the store warns you about this... ''most'' of the time.
*** However, there are now very easy ways to get a non-steam copy of all their games.
* Recently, copy protection has resulted in controversy because some gamers and journalists have complained that copy protection systems can make some games unplayable and can even make the computer unusable. For example, the copy protection software known as "StarForce" was boycotted by some gamers due to these issues. Some of StarForce's nastier side-effects included reduced system security due to the
** About routinely swapping out hardware - hardcore gamers do that as well. [[Rich Bitch|There are people who swap out video cards as soon as a newer card hit the market]].
** ''[http://www.galciv2.com/ Galactic Civilizations 2]'' by Star''dock'' Systems features "No CD copy protection"; once you install the game, you never have to verify it again. They felt that ease of use was worth the increased risk. The trick is that Stardock provides lots of free patches and content updates; If they find out your copy is being pirated, you don't get those anymore. Star''Force'', mentioned above, was so impressed by this system that they posted a link to a webpage where one could download pirated versions of ''Galactic Civilizations 2''. The backlash from gamers was so intense that they quickly removed the link.
** Speaking of Starforce, they've updated their copy protection nowdays—so if you buy a game with the old
** The launch of ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' was screwed up, plain and simple, when the single-player offline game shipped with SecuROM Copy Protection that allowed installation twice, ever, before the customer had to contact support. In its wake came crashing authentication servers, the customer support of the publisher and of its parent company each referring people to the other, said support demanding photos of the CD and the manual, people in smaller countries being asked to phone the same support - i.e., to make international calls in a foreign language, PR representatives assuaging the public by falsely stating that properly uninstalling the game would give the right to another installation, finding out that installing on another account or making what SecuROM deems to be a significant hardware change counts, the protection disrupting other programs if they look like the sort that might be used for cracking, the demo coming with SecuROM - without activation - when it
*** All of this extra security didn't stop a pirated version of the game appearing three weeks after the game was released.
**** And ever better yet, ''[[Spore]]'', which also used SecuROM, was cracked a good 4–5 days '''before''' release.
** The Starforce copy protection on ''[[Cold Fear]]'' was so bad that it locked up a large percentage of legitimate copies, and Ubisoft ''had to distribute a scene no-cd crack'' for paying customers to be able to play the game. They released their own no-cd patch later, but it was essentially the same as the scene patch.
** Likewise, the Starforce copy protection on legitimate copies of ''[[Rogue Trooper]]'' is absurdly prone to false positives, but the publishers/developers never bothered to fix the problem because not enough people bought the game for them to care anyway.
* In similar vein to StarForce, Denuvo became the bane for PC gamers due to numerous allegations of it adding significant overhead to games it came protected with, like high CPU usage and excessive wear and tear on storage media especially SSDs. Denuvo of course denied such claims, though some evidence suggests that the protection was detrimental to performance.<ref>[https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/282924-denuvo-really-does-cripple-pc-gaming-performance Denuvo Really Does Cripple PC Gaming Performance]</ref> Other outlets dispute this however, as test results with a cracked copy of ''[[Assassin's Creed Origins]]'' that had its protection (painstakenly) gutted out weren't as dramatic as expected. On top of this and activation woes, Voksi, a Bulgarian hacker who released cracks for several Denuvo-protected games, was arrested following complaints by the company, and 3DM, a Chinese warez group, reportedly threw in the towel due to how initially hard it was to circumvent it.
* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]: Armageddon'' had copy protection which caused the game to boot up and then go into ''Cabela's Big Game Hunter''.
* Some games like ''[[Mechwarrior]]'', ''[[Warcraft]]'' and ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' had special, network-client-only "spawn" installations that you could make many or an unlimited number of on other machines from just one copy and run without the disks (sometimes full versions and/or demos would automatically run in "spawn" mode when you don't pass the copy protection). These needed a full installation on another machine to act as a server, and would sometimes connect only to servers run by the full install from the same copy. Similarly, ''[[Diablo II]]'' allowed you to install a "multiplayer Version" with which you could play online, without the cd, but disabled the single-player segment of the game.
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