[Scummvm-devel] Detecting patched games

[Thierry Crozat]

Le 15 août 2010 à 22:52, Oystein Eftevaag a écrit :
> My question here remains, I think: What do we actually gain from this, 
> that we don't get by just adding a warning?

Legal security?

I don't really follow your reasoning. I have cracked some games back in the days so that I did not need to insert the CD each time I wanted to play them. But since I have the original CDs what is the problem with copying the uncracked version from the CD to play with ScummVM (especially as the no-CD crack is not needed there)?
I know that some copy protections are really annoying and can be removed using a crack. If I want to use it I can just modify and recompile my version of ScummVM (and you already made it clear how easy it was). So I have no issue with the initial idea of recognizing some cracked version and skipping them during detection.

Furthermore the original message from Eugene was mentioning report from user for unknown MD5s. That would cut that as well. If the user recompiles ScummVM to make it work he will know that he probably won't get support from us. Also if the game is unstable because of the crack, we hopefully won't get bug reports for those. And with the unmodified ScummVM he won't get a message asking him to report these MD5s and maybe instead will be compelled to buy the original game (if he doesn't already have it that is - and maybe I am dreaming there).

So I would still be in favor of blocking known cracked versions (if the crack was helping piracy - e.g. removing copy protection).

And to answer Max's concern that it will make it easier to recognize cracked version as there will only be a flag to remove, it is true but only marginally so I think. It is not very difficult to add the MD5s for a game is it?

Thierry