Re: How to stop Piracy?


Any advice will be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance!

If it is a stand alone 'single user' app then anything you do can be beaten
if the hackers have enough skill. Somewhere the sub routines are being
called and they will NOP them out. I have spent considerable time
deliberatly making some boot code no call any subroutines by having insane
branch strings all branching without any sort of far jumps and filling in
all the code room inbetween. This makes it much harder to crack, but
eventually they bring out a exe with completely recoded boot code.

The absolute best way is to make part of the program dependant on an online
server. For example we might have a super expensive compiler for a
processor, we know everyone is going to pirate it and not obey the licensce
restrictions), so we make it so that their source code is transmitted to us
and we compile and return the binary to them. This means they need internet
access and we need a powerful computer to keep up with all the users wanting
to compile. Not only that but in many cases our servers compile much faster
than the users, who can normally take a few minutes, we do it in a second
and transmit it straight back, everyone is happy (except the priates or when
the internet drops out!)

This can be incorporated into video games as well. When you play a single
player game against AI non player characters - have a central server
computer doing the calculations for the AI, thus you can't play the game in
single player mode without the connection to the internet server, which you
can only do through a unqiue login. That login comes from the CD key on the
cover of the game and once it used once thats it, it cant be used again.
This system is next to impossible to beat (people can share accounts if they
play at different times to each other), but this system requires enermous
CPU power. With the speed of the internet these days lag isn't a problem but
we are still a fair way off people accepting 'lag' in a single player game!

Many games already imploy this to a lesser degree. If the game is
multiplayer and features a server then its next to impossible to pirate the
software (for example Counter Strike Source is very hard to pirate because
everytime you play you must login to servers).

Of course if your software gets to popular then they just somehow rig up
their own servers (never give out any server apps). This is hard to do for
games. For example with counter strike you can download the server and
simply turn off authentification... then pirates can come and play, infact
there are whole networks of 'priate' servers for that game souly for that
purpose.


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