[Scummvm-devel] Detecting patched games

Oystein Eftevaag wintermute at geheb.com
Sun Aug 15 23:52:53 CEST 2010


On 8/15/10 1:33 PM, Max Horn wrote:
> Am 15.08.2010 um 10:58 schrieb Bertrand Augereau:
>
>    
>> I agree with your stance, there.
>>      
> I don't quite agree with it (for reference, Betrand was referring to Oystein's position that users may have legitimately applied a crack). The example seems rather contrived to me. Oystein, Betrand, do you have any *concrete* example of a ScummVM supported game that you have patched yourself, for reasons as outlined in Oystein's mail? Note also that we legally bypass copy protection for some games in the engine, instead of patching game data; and also note that many "patches" that are meant to bypass copy protection are buggy and cause issues in the games at other points.
>
>    

The games I've cracked (which is the usual term) these days, are mostly 
newer games (probably mainly because the inbuilt copy protection bypass 
we have). The principle applies though; and if there's a game I want to 
play that has a copy protection that I find the least bit irksome, 
there's a very low threshold before I go looking for a crack. I'm not 
alone in this, I can guarantee you that.

And I've personally very seldom had any problems with games after I've 
applied cracks that I can remember, but I'm sure there's some examples 
of that. Hence why I think a "We don't support this game variant" 
warning would probably be a good idea, instead.
> Anyway, in the end, we are moving in a very grey area here. So no matter what we do, we will leave some people unhappy... There is no perfect solution, I am afraid. As it is, though, I think the people who really want to hack their game copies manually are few far and between; and people who can do that certainly can recompile ScummVM with the MD5 of their custom game data inserted, can't they?
>
>    

Cracking games you own yourself is much more common than that these 
days, since DRM/copy protections in many cases are becoming more and 
more intrusive. If it becomes a habit, people will do it for their older 
games as well.

Anecdotally, but: From what I've heard at work, a very high percentage 
of people who bought the PC version of Dreamfall applied cracks to get 
rid of the Starforce copy protection. Obviously not a ScummVM supported 
game, but even in the later part of that era it was pretty common to 
apply no-CD cracks to games, for example. It was like ripping an audio 
CD to MP3s: You did it so that even if your CD got lost, you could still 
enjoy what you bought. Which, again, is perfectly legal.

Thinking people who crack their legal copies are few far and between is 
a pretty big assumption.
>> Anyway somebody with a compiler and a svn client will probably ship builds that accept pirated games, don't you think?
>>      
> Indeed; and this would be even easier than ever before, as they would only need to remove that "pirated" flag (resp. the code that checks for it). This is IMHO a major drawback of the "include MD5 to be able to notify users about piracy" idea.
>
>    

If pirates just ship their modified ScummVM binaries, it means we'll 
pretty much just hurt legitimate users (ironically, same thing studios 
like Ubisoft have started doing with their recent copyprotection schemes).

> But again, there just is no perfect solution ... Hrm...
>
>    

My question here remains, I think: What do we actually gain from this, 
that we don't get by just adding a warning?

// Oystein






More information about the Scummvm-devel mailing list