Okay, I've been thinking about game piracy, DRM and stuff like that a lot. One of the biggest criticisms of any anti-piracy scheme is that it makes the game worse for the users. I think I've come up with something that would reduce piracy, but not affect legit users at all.
My idea involves no DRM. In fact, it is not connected to the game itself at all.
The idea? Spam.
Not email spam. Spam the torrent sites. Upload dozens of indexes for the demo, each slightly-differently labeled, but each seeming to be the full, cracked game. People trying to pirate it instead get a demo copy, which works to make them want the game more (if the game is any good). Repeat for major non-BT piracy sites.
Yes, the indexes will start filtering things more. But, short of having someone do a full playthrough of every submission, they will never be able to completely filter the spam out.
Yes, people will still upload actual, pirated copies, but most pirates will give up trying to find them. Remember, this idea is about making it hard for the pirates, not making it impossible. It's a fact of life that people will pirate a game.
The best part of this idea (to the publisher, at least) is that it works alongside any other DRM. You can spam the torrents whether you're using Starforce, SecuROM, Steam, a simple CD Key, or nothing at all. It will cost the publishers nearly nothing: hire an intern for a few hours, set up a couple dinky servers to make the torrent seem active.
Sure, the pirates will hate this. People who use BitTorrent for legal reasons might dislike it if you chose bad keywords. However, the former are costing you some lost sales (nowhere near 1:1, mind you, but some), and the latter are few and far between, and usually frequent different torrent sites than the pirates.
I do believe this plan is what's called a "win-win". The players get less DRM, since there's fewer pirates, and the game developers get more money from ex-pirates who gave up and bought the thing.
Is this enough to stop piracy period? I doubt it. As Slashdot has proven, good community moderation/metamoderation can let just a few people manage a massive site. They'll figure out a way to keep the cracked versions flowing. But doing this will make things hard on them. And most of all, it won't hurt the players, the actual customers.
As an aside to any game companies reading this, make sure you keep a list of what you yourselves uploaded. Don't get caught in the Viacom situation, where you sue someone for illegally hosting your content only to realize you uploaded it yourself. Also be sure to chose keywords and such properly, to avoid affecting people who aren't even looking for your game.
So, Facepunch, can you find any flaws in this plan? Seriously, I'd like to know if you can figure out a way this hurts legit users, or if it violates some law I don't know of. Maybe false advertising, if you claim the game is "100% CRACKED FOR REAL THIS TIME", and it's just a demo. Maybe some weird court ruling. I don't know; I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a guy who had an idea.
Yes, the pirates will find a way around it. To quote some famous guy, probably Churchill, "The bombers will always get through". This isn't about stopping all of them, it's about stopping some of them.
I'm pretty sure companies spamming [b]anything[/b] is illegal.
Just... No.
You can sort by seeds in most trackers. Also private trackers would not be affected at all.
[editline]1:11[/editline]
[QUOTE=Asmaedus;21955053]This wouldn't work because the fake torrents would be listed as having 1 seeder. No one would download a torrent with 1 seeder when a healthier torrent is available.[/QUOTE]
Any game publisher could afford to put up seedboxes bound to IPs on their subnets to make it look like their game has several hundred seeders.
Won't work. You can just search for the most seeded ones or only get them from trusted users.
God damn it are you kidding me
This wouldn't work because the fake torrents would be listed as having 1 seeder. No one would download a torrent with 1 seeder when a healthier torrent is available.
no
No
When people look at the size of the file...they will realise something is up.
[QUOTE=:smug:;21955095]When people look at the size of the file...they will realise something is up.[/QUOTE]
Pad the executable and other files that can handle it with useless data.
No.
This is a really, REALLY redundant idea to be honest
How hard is it to set up a couple servers to help seed? With the power of most servers, you could run a couple hundred virtual machines to seed.
Yes, private trackers won't be affected. In my experience, those aren't as common anyways.
Yes, spamming anything might be illegal. But who will sue you? The people who wanted to steal your game? They know that's suicide, since the game companies can countersue for "intent to commit piracy" or whatever the legalese is. The trackers might sue, but I doubt it. They want to stay under the radar. Besides, a CAN-SPAM fine is what, a couple hundred grand? Besides, is a couple dozen entries "spam"? If you were a pirate, how many entries would you sort through before giving up?
[quote=B1N4RY!]This is a really, REALLY redundant idea to be honest
[/quote]
How so? It's low-cost, low-effort. Maybe not the highest payout, but it doesn't (as far as I can tell) affect the players, making it relatively free of the backlash most anti-piracy gets.
Have you never used torrents before? They already do this to little effect. Except instead of spamming fake torrents they poison the swarm with bogus data. Which most torrent clients can easily handle by banning them.
no
There are already systems set up to counter spam/virus links, even on public trackers. Look at the colored skull system on Pirate Bay.
Have you ever used a torrent site?
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21955155]How hard is it to set up a couple servers to help seed? With the power of most servers, you could run a couple hundred virtual machines to seed.
[/quote]
Seedboxes.
[quote]
Yes, private trackers won't be affected. In my experience, those aren't as common anyways.
[/quote]
Not as common, but plenty more safe. People who pirate regularly either have a private tracker account or live in a country that doesn't give a damn.
[quote]
Yes, spamming anything might be illegal. But who will sue you? The people who wanted to steal your game? They know that's suicide, since the game companies can countersue for "intent to commit piracy" or whatever the legalese is. The trackers might sue, but I doubt it. They want to stay under the radar. Besides, a CAN-SPAM fine is what, a couple hundred grand? Besides, is a couple dozen entries "spam"? If you were a pirate, how many entries would you sort through before giving up?[/QUOTE]
All you have to do is ban the entire company's subnet. Then if they manage to redo it it's illegal circumvention (especially if the tracker sends a Cease & Desist). Plus a good lawyer might be able to spin it as a form of Distributed Denial of Service and probably breaking the Terms of Service.
Better:
Provide a more convenient way of getting games. Online sales is a good example.
Provide demos and benchmarkers as well.
And don't fill them with DRM, that means a good chunk of the pirates will just buy the game.
No one will ever defeat piracy by force or malicious techniques, piracy itself as an entity exists around avoiding, bypassing, and surviving. Fighting it with force will only make it stronger and more capable.
Piracy can only be fought with appeal, comfort, and understanding, and a few other methods which fall under such categories, including occasional cooperation and backwards engineering.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;21955176]Have you never used torrents before? They already do this to little effect. Except instead of spamming fake torrents they poison the swarm with bogus data. Which most torrent clients can easily handle by banning them.[/QUOTE]
The torrents I actually download are mostly Linux ISOs and such, so no, I haven't noticed any bogus data. Still, the biggest pro-piracy argument I hear is that it's so simple. I did a couple test searches, and found very little overlap between torrents. There's usually just one active torrent for a particular product. This plan is about making that one torrent hard to find.
[QUOTE=GamerKiwi;21955233]Better:
Provide a more convenient way of getting games. Online sales is a good example.
Provide demos and benchmarkers as well.
And don't fill them with DRM, that means a good chunk of the pirates will just buy the game.[/QUOTE]
Right. Want to know why I bought Just Cause 2? The demo on Steam rocked my balls off. Other devs need to take a hint and produce FUN games with DEMOS and people will actually buy them.
[QUOTE=gman003-main;21955265]The torrents I actually download are mostly Linux ISOs and such, so no, [/quote] Totally haven't heard that one before.[quote]I haven't noticed any bogus data. Still, the biggest pro-piracy argument I hear is that it's so simple. I did a couple test searches, and found very little overlap between torrents. There's usually just one active torrent for a particular product. This plan is about making that one torrent hard to find.[/QUOTE]
It's not that there's only one, there's usually several. It's just that the best one wins out.
Torrent sites have been filled with fakes for a while. They get around this by having some sort of 'respected user' feature, so people only trust those who have a history of uploading real cracked software
Person downloads torrent, notices its spam. Comments on torrent saying its spam. People read comment, don't download and download the actual pirated game from a higher seeded torrent. You just really can't stop piracy unless you fuck over the buying customers a bit too, but even then it can't really be stopped.
[QUOTE=genkaz92;21955262]No one will ever defeat piracy by force or malicious techniques, piracy itself as an entity exists around avoiding, bypassing, and surviving. Fighting it with force will only make it stronger and more capable.
Piracy can only be fought with appeal, comfort, and understanding, and a few other methods which fall under those categories, including occasional cooperation and backwards engineering.[/QUOTE]
I'll go out and say the analogy your hinting at to the conqueror/insurgency paradigm. I will now point out that plenty of insurgencies have been defeated by brute strength. Look at the ancient Romans. When they defeated a rebellion, they did so by ruthless extermination. It worked. It may not be the cheapest or most effective way, but it works.
You're also ignoring the flip side of my idea: by reducing the number of pirates, the executives may be more willing to reduce DRM. That in turn will convert some pirates into customers, reducing the number of pirates, et cetera, ad infinitum, quid erat demonstradum.
Ever heard of Warez boards?
[QUOTE=Stupideye;21955351]Person downloads torrent, notices its spam. Comments on torrent saying its spam. People read comment, don't download and download the actual pirated game from a higher seeded torrent. You just really can't stop piracy unless you fuck over the buying customers a bit too, but even then it can't really be stopped.[/QUOTE]
Counter: search tracker until you find a real, cracked copy. Flag it as a fake.
Next pirate comes along, sees yet another copy commented as fake, moves on.
The game of cat and mouse (or whatever animal analogy) will go on forever. This idea of mine is just one step.
Warez boards are forums that share warez. Either links that they uploaded or ones they know are real.
Your idea is now invalid. [/thread]
Most torrent sites have the option of rating a torrent.
Also, places like TPB have trusted uploaders so people will just go to them if it starts getting "spammy".
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