Protect Pictures?

#1 You can encrypt.decrypt the package, but it is only a matter of time before someone will figure it out--assuming that someone cares wnough to do it. It is like password encoded ZIP files. Once someone cracks the password, your security is defeated. For an unpopular (or marginally popular) game, most probably won't care. For an immensely popular game, it will be cracked very, very quickly.

#2 Is there any other way beside encrypting it?

#3 Stuffing it into an archive or enroll your own format.

#4 And both can be reverse engineered rather easily if your game is "good enough" to warrant reverse engineering. And you want it to be.

I'm going to throw around a whole lot of conjecture now.

I can understand protecting IP (we all want credit for what we do)., but I often think that people worry too much about the wrong things--or the right things at the wrong time or in the wrong way.

If your game is popular, people will instanty recognize stolent content. If your game is unpopular, no one will care. You want to be in the popular group. Not only will it make you money, but you won't have to be the one to cry foul and search piracy and hack forums for indiscretions rather than working on your next title. Your audience will do it for you.

A dedicated team of hackers used to bin'ing their way through file types to find their secrets will undermine most competant game programmers. You could, alternatively, hire an expensive security firm and have them code your archive and format stuff from scratch in "high-security" methologies among professionals at the top of their industry. But you will notice in their legal contract, that they don't offer a 100% guarantee over any data that you personally deliver to another machine. Giving someone physical access to your data is the first step to giving crackers something to chew on.

A simple encryption scheme in an archive is easy enough for talented crackers and advanced enough to make the curious ingnorants among us move on without giving it a second thought. It is neither challenging nor resourceful for them (it is not like a key code which will stop them from illegally playing your game, which is much more likely to get cracked).

But there are a number of things to think about. First, is your game a single-player or multiplayer game (multiplayer games have more potential for exposure and exploitation since they are made to be played with someone else). You may be able to stop peole from accessing your content on your servers (or playing your game) illegally, but it is much more difficult to stop the private servers that pop up so that people with illicit copies (or who hate your social metrics and rules) can play with each other. Second , is your game moddable? Closing your file formats and archives closes off your resources to the community you are trying to foster. This is the reason that Unreal, Quake, Half-Life, etc have heavy-handed mod rules. Third, if you're making a single-player game, how long do you hope that it will remain relevant in your player's game-lives? Single-player games are extremely short lived, and the ones that stick (the Final Fantasies, Devil May Cry, Chrono Trigger, MS Flight Simulator, Sim City, The Sims) are rarities. Shoot for the rarity, expect the short-life. Combining modability with single-player games can expand the lifecycle if the game sticks with your target market and your content tools are significantly smooth.

Okay, conjecture mode off. Sorry to clutter up your topic. The point was asking about making adequate evaluations of why you need to protect your content (say you have a contract employee who wants his model protected and another one who wants his freely available as a resume builder and your company can't afford a legal team to strong arm them both into the same boat) and how much is "good enough" to provide the services to your target market.

#5 David,

The important thing here is to not spend too much time on the features I suggested. EVERYTHING can be reverse engineered as long as it's on the users harddrive, that's a given. But that doesn't mean you can lock out at least some of those people that want in.

#6 I know. It wasn't a direct comment to your post aside from the opening sentence. I just happened to get strruck in the middle of a thought and commented on my thought in relation to the topic. But you just said in two lines what I said in several. Conciseness is a gift I do not have. ;-)

#7 But the abillity(spelled right?) to edit things is just making the game, mod. friendly, right?

#8 Ok but what if you don't want people to make illegal copies of your game?

#9 Piracy prevention is different than hiding away your game textures into obfuscated files.

Preventing piracy is theorically impossible. If it were doable in pratical ways (ie: without spending lots of money or adding anti-user features), you wouldn't see those triple-A games avaliable for download the moment they go gold.

Of course, you shouldn't release your game naked, and preventing the casual users from copying it without having to download an illegal patch somewhere is often enough. For CD games, there are basic protection solutions offered by many companies, to make your game require the original disc on the drive. The cost and methods for those varies a lot, some requiring special processes during CD press.

For digitally-distributed, several people use variations of serial key-based methods.

#10 David: I disagree :p What you said is more detailed. Which is always better.

Ben: It depends what the developer want :) It is also easier to cheat.

Bejong: That's impossible, as Manoel said.