Quote: Posted 05/29/04 21:02:59 (GMT) by Dethangels Shadow

Quote: Posted 05/27/04 19:02:23 (GMT) by Derek French

Quote: Posted 05/27/04 13:53:17 (GMT) by BattleRaptor

How to stop piracy to almost nill

create a USB device like a cartridge drive.

This is the failed 'dongle' idea from 10+ years ago. It comes with hardware incompatibilities and is just as easily cracked as a CD check. This would also drive up manufacturing costs significantly.

Hang on a sec... why is it a "failed" idea?

I've seen many commercial applications using that system. As I noted earlier, it does begin to look silly when you have 4+ parallel or serial dongles connected in tandem, but with USB... it really shouldn't matter. They're small, inobtrusive, and can fit on a keychain. The pricepoint is an issue, however, I've seen them in the ~$15 range for quantities of 1,000... imagine 10,000 or 100,000.. that'd have to make a huge dent in the price-point.

Don't forget, the idea of "copy protection" isn't to prevent it from being cracked/hacked/etc., rather to make it difficult for the majority of the public to participate in.

If the game itself was designed to employ the protection, then wouldn't that prevent a lot of the problems that generally occur with publisher-based protection?

ceterum censeo ambulatiuncula esse delen

---