5 ms·

When I was working on video game cartridges, I discovered that one of my neighbors in my apartment building was a prolific pirate. I introduced myself and we ha

by kabdib 4y ago

When I was working on video game cartridges, I discovered that one of my neighbors in my apartment building was a prolific pirate. I introduced myself and we had some fun chats. The Atari 800 cartridge address range could be populated with RAM, and cartridge images simply copied to RAM and run. Copy protection techniques usually involved figuring out sneaky ways to write to that address range (which would crash an image running from RAM). Toward the end of one project, I spent about two weeks writing an encrypted, multi-stage anti-copy system. A few months after the game shipped, I asked my pirate "friend" about it. "That was a hard one," he said, "It took us nearly three days to crack it."

andymccurdy 4y ago
The Atari 800 was my first console and where I typed my first lines of Basic code. While it wasn't obvious as a 7 or 8 year old kid, I reflect back on this experience fondly and recognize that it was instrumental in my development as a self-taught software engineer. Thank you for your role in my personal development.
- kabdib 4y ago
  The Atari 800 was released (IIRC) in 1979. It was a surprisingly good platform, with a decent OS, a tolerable file system (for a slow floppy disk), and great documentation all around. I learned a lot reading the Atari docs, long before I worked there.
Gigachad 4y ago
These days the companies won and modern game DRM often doesn’t get cracked for the first year if at all.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Steam seems to have significantly reduced the market for pirated games. Streaming did that for movies for a while, until every single production company decided start their own.
  - snuxoll 4y ago
    Almost like Gabe Newell is right, piracy is first and foremost a service problem. There's some irony in things like Denuvo making games worse for legitimate users and creating new incentives to crack it, or players deferring purchases until it's either inevitably removed long after the launch window (where publishers are expecting the majority of purchases to happen).
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      To some extent. With modern AAA games costing ~$100AUD these days, there is still a strong incentive to pirate even if it’s far more convenient to buy.
      - tcmart14 4y ago
        It definitely is nuanced and everyone has their limits, which may depend on their personal circumstance. The solution for companies it to find a solution. An easy enough solution at a price point most people find reasonable. There are some people where the convenience or price point will never be good enough, but those are edge cases. As mentioned by someone else in a different way, you don't want to alienate your majority of happy current users to try to scoop up the handful who will probably just write off your product completely rather than pay. For instance, current Netflix pricing I am okay with, with the content they have. If the price triples, you bet your ass I am going back to torrents unless they really step up the quality and quantity of content.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    The difference is that it is always possible to rip a movie but cracking games with server side computations could be practically impossible.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      The games industry has moved to where even single player games are online enhanced experiences. As angry as that makes users here, gamers and corporations are quite happy with that arrangement which blocks piracy and makes games more fun.
- ilyt 4y ago
  That heavily depends on game in question. Some use "top of the line" DRM still get cracked within a week.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    There is apparently only one person in the world cracking Denuvo and they are very unreliable/unstable. Most of the major "week one" incidents have been accidental leakages of the unprotected game. There is just very little incentive anymore. The skill level for hacking game DRM is extremely high now and those people would rather spend their time working on one of the many bug bounties where they can get huge payouts and public recognition for hacking ios vs having to hide behind tor and risk arrest to provide kids with free games.

by kabdib 4y ago

andymccurdy 4y ago

The Atari 800 was my first console and where I typed my first lines of Basic code. While it wasn't obvious as a 7 or 8 year old kid, I reflect back on this experience fondly and recognize that it was instrumental in my development as a self-taught software engineer. Thank you for your role in my personal development.

kabdib 4y ago
The Atari 800 was released (IIRC) in 1979. It was a surprisingly good platform, with a decent OS, a tolerable file system (for a slow floppy disk), and great documentation all around. I learned a lot reading the Atari docs, long before I worked there.

Gigachad 4y ago

These days the companies won and modern game DRM often doesn’t get cracked for the first year if at all.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Steam seems to have significantly reduced the market for pirated games. Streaming did that for movies for a while, until every single production company decided start their own.
- snuxoll 4y ago
  Almost like Gabe Newell is right, piracy is first and foremost a service problem. There's some irony in things like Denuvo making games worse for legitimate users and creating new incentives to crack it, or players deferring purchases until it's either inevitably removed long after the launch window (where publishers are expecting the majority of purchases to happen).
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    To some extent. With modern AAA games costing ~$100AUD these days, there is still a strong incentive to pirate even if it’s far more convenient to buy.
    - tcmart14 4y ago
      It definitely is nuanced and everyone has their limits, which may depend on their personal circumstance. The solution for companies it to find a solution. An easy enough solution at a price point most people find reasonable. There are some people where the convenience or price point will never be good enough, but those are edge cases. As mentioned by someone else in a different way, you don't want to alienate your majority of happy current users to try to scoop up the handful who will probably just write off your product completely rather than pay. For instance, current Netflix pricing I am okay with, with the content they have. If the price triples, you bet your ass I am going back to torrents unless they really step up the quality and quantity of content.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  The difference is that it is always possible to rip a movie but cracking games with server side computations could be practically impossible.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    The games industry has moved to where even single player games are online enhanced experiences. As angry as that makes users here, gamers and corporations are quite happy with that arrangement which blocks piracy and makes games more fun.
ilyt 4y ago
That heavily depends on game in question. Some use "top of the line" DRM still get cracked within a week.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  There is apparently only one person in the world cracking Denuvo and they are very unreliable/unstable. Most of the major "week one" incidents have been accidental leakages of the unprotected game. There is just very little incentive anymore. The skill level for hacking game DRM is extremely high now and those people would rather spend their time working on one of the many bug bounties where they can get huge payouts and public recognition for hacking ios vs having to hide behind tor and risk arrest to provide kids with free games.