PlayNoEvil - Game Security, IT Security, and Secure Game Design Services - Contact Us at ceo@secureplay.com - DRM, Game Piracy & Used Games

Honey and Carrots - Anti-Piracy, P2P, Used Games and beyond

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:04:29 -0700

The most important lesson of Facebook is that a lot of people will trade their sensitive personal information for a virtual hat.

Game companies regularly have trouble ENFORCING good behavior. DRM systems being the most extreme examples, but also dealing with cheating and, in a recent incident, using your customers as a peer-to-peer distribution system.

Givem' a hat. or an affiliate program, or a referral reward, or a contest, or a coupon.

Transparent rewards for good behavior - carrots and honey - can encourage good behavior and be a great marketing tool. The key is that the rewards be real and that they are not substitutes for services that users expect from the game (the danger of charging for multi-player and Project $10).

"Game Publishers Using Stealth P2P Clients", http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/09/03/2047247/Game-Publishers-Using-Stealth-P2P-Clients

B. Parfitt (2010), "THQ talks premium online multiplayer, tackling pre-owned impact", http://www.mcvuk.com/news/40360/THQ-talks-premium-online-multiplayer-tackling-pre-owned-impact

M. McWhertor (2010), "Machinarium Maker Offers Amnesty To The 85% Of People Who Pirated Their Game", http://kotaku.com/5606886/machinarium-maker-offers-amnesty-to-the-85-of-people-who-pirated-their-game

Making Anti-Piracy Pay - Rethinking DRM

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:36:40 -0700

Digital Rights Management. Anti-Piracy. For legitimate players, these words send a shiver down their spine promising onerous registrations, re-install limitations, and annoying game play restrictions. For publishers, they are an elusive Holy Grail - promising additional revenues and punishing pirate players... but always in the next release or product.

If you've read my blog or bought my book, you know that I have been a very harsh critic of anti-piracy and DRM as I've often seen them as expensive and ineffective.

I'm here to change my position.

Somewhat.

Piracy is a real problem. It does cost revenue. For PC games, 80 percent of the total players of a game did not purchase the game. For console games, we just don't have good data, but console piracy has caused publishers to seriously alter their platform strategy.

My view of anti-piracy tech is colored by its business model and implementation strategy. Anti-piracy firms have usually gotten paid per copy printed or, at best, registered, and the "anti-piracy" policies seem to be focused on punishment.

When I speak on the topic, I've argued that when we are talking DRM we should be talking Digital Revenue Maximization.

At least one anti-piracy firm (alas unwilling to be named as yet) has actually used this strategy.

Their model is simple and should be irresistible for any game developer: they get paid only for pirated copies that convert to legitimate sales.

From a security perspective, this is brilliant. The security firm is rewarded for being effective in detecting pirated copies and not being circumvented.

Pirated copies simply become "Informally Distributed Demos".

From a business perspective, pirated copies become an additional market channel for their products with zero cost distribution and money coming in because of effective security.

The numbers that I was told were impressive. The return on investment was much, much higher for the security firm than they would get from charging their usual rate of between 5 and 50 cents per copy, even with a substantial revenue share back to the publisher.

There are a lot of devils in the details of this approach, and it does not address the customer's issues with draconian security systems directly, but it does make anti-piracy a credible part of a business strategy and, equally importantly, make anti-piracy systems a much more viable business. The nice thing is that even if the system is imperfect, the incentives are correct for everyone and partial hacks simply delay the point at which the player is offered the chance to make their usage legitimate.

Finally, it does answer the question that bedevils game developers:

What do you do when you detect a pirated game copy?

Offer to sell the Player the game, of course!

NOTED: New R4i Cartridge to vex Nintendo

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 08:32:59 -0700

The R4 cartridge, which allows regular SD cards to be used instead of Nintendo's proprietary cartridges, has been replaced by a new version that works with the Nintendo DSi. These cartridges are often used by pirates to download stolen games onto SD cards (used in cameras and cell phones) and then use them with the cartridge. There is an inherent "removable media" problem for console games that is very hard to stop.

It will be interesting to see what Nintendo does with its new 3DS cartridge to stop (or at least slow down) this problem.

"R4 SDHC Team Releases New v2.10T Card", http://www.prlog.org/10744119-r4-sdhc-team-releases-new-v210t-card.html

NOTED: Namco Bandai backs Ubisoft's Continuous Connection Strategy

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:21:15 -0700

Namco Bandai's CEO has come out in support of Ubisoft's Continuous Connection strategy for fighting game piracy.

The re-engagement of the game industry on the issue of piracy is interesting to note - last year, it looked like DRM was on its last legs and everyone was moving to very loose policies for their PC games. It could be the economic hard times for the industry has a whole or a re-emphasis on PC games (or the first move in abandoning PC games) by the major game publishers.

Of course PC games outside of the major publishers are in more than a bit of a renaissance. The vibrant MMO market, the up & coming social games market, and a growing range of indie games that are optimized for the PC, not to mention classic PC titles from Valve and Blizzard perhaps making the traditional game publishers rethink their PC game strategies.

B. Parfitt (2010), "Namco backs Ubisofts DRM", http://www.mcvuk.com/news/39196/Namco-backs-Ubisofts-DRM

NOTED: Sony continues piracy fight on the PSP

ceo@secureplay.com (SecurePlay) — Wed, 26 May 2010 07:08:07 -0700

Sony's PSP has been a poster child for the problems of piracy. The handheld game platform continues to sell reasonably well (excluding the "Go" version), but publishers have avoided it. Sony has attempted to fight the worst piracy methods with operating system updates, but these seem to be circumvented almost as soon as they are released.

The operating system hacks allow a player to bypass any form of security that is added to a game much more easily.

Sony is now discussing some sort of "protective code" that can be embedded in a game that will help fight pirates. One strategy that might work is that the game could attempt to check to see if the console's operating system has been hacked (this would be limit Sony's ability to further update the operating system, though there could be some clever ways around this).

Other options would be to implement some sort of online registration, but this is not necessarily a given for most PSP games.

As always with the PSP, it should be interesting to watch.

A. Yoon (2010), "Sony offering PSP developers code to 'slow down' piracy", http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/21/sony-offering-psp-developers-code-to-slow-down-piracy/

C. Nutt (2010), "The Sony Situation: SCEA's Rob Dyer Speaks", http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4709/the_sony_situation_sceas_rob_.php?page=4