Argghh...

#41 Those are some interesting thoughts.

You'll likely agree however, that with a $1k USD price tag, the casual/recreational users will probably flee anyway. And pointing to a more production oriented community is consistent with giving public access to the docs and forums, as supossedly people would be seriously working on game dev.

In the end, opening the community will strengthen it, but the fact is that not only those who pay for it will benefit.

Thats something really hard to balance, and I agree with you that probably more value should be added for those who pay for the tech.

#42

Quote:But not to let out the dirty secret, but most people who have purchased Torque/Unity/C4/Blade3D... and thats hundereds of thousands of people... never shipped a game with the engine they purchased.

Count me to them ... I don't own C4 and Blade 3D thought but many other technologies including Power Render 6 and 7, DBP, all Blitz Products and a few others things.
On the other hand, I'm a tech developer, till I through some strange coincidence get best friends with an artist or get a new GF that is one, I likely won't release much aside from potentially free ad based iphone games.

But what I do is use those techs to do freelance 3rd party development, recently especially with Unity and Blitz3D / BlitzPlus and I see that as just as satisfying, as I can help others to follow their dreams that aren't as programming savy as I or just not as sick spending so many hours on that whole stuff. I actually only invested in T3D to be up to date on the Torque Product line, should corresponding job offers happen and will for that purpose likely also finish my "not that artistic great" browser based fun shooter for my T3D portfolio


As for the DRM: we are using a source based engine. I really don't see a point in using a DRM in that case, as nobody is forced to use the tool if he has enough brain to use Visual Studio.
DRM would only work for precompiled users as it is with TGB.

I would actually approach and prefer the "what you get as legit licensee" way and potentially highlight great resources stronger.
Potentially even go ahead and get kind of bounty competitions in place to strengthen the community interest

#43 I just hope DRM isn't ever the issue to fixing the problem. DRM only stands to hurt people using the software and you will waste resources writing or paying for it and then playing cat and mouse games with those trying to crack the DRM. If ultimately will be used as a bullet point from other companies as to why someone should buy their software instead of yours (those offering the source) and people will stop using the product because of it.

The best thing you can do is if you find it hope to find where it leaked from and move on.

#44 One of the forums I had found linking to a pirated copy of Torque3d also included a recommendation for and link to a pirated copy of XXXXXXX, as well the newest version of the XXX(which came out only two days ago?!), plus half of the GG store. It's not so much a sense of indignation it's the shocking speed of this pirated turnover that I find appalling. I expected to eventually hear of Torque 3D being pirated... but not within a few days of the Beta5 release! That's just willful & blatant disregard and downright disrespectful of everyone here and those involved in developing such products.

In the end though these people are only fooling themselves and the "they'll never do anything with it" sentiment is probably correct.

Quote:
I'd love to see the look on their face when a developer of the product they're stealing is stomping on him.

Hell yes! In my searching I had even found that something else I had worked on is being pirated. And that's flattering, in a way... But still, I would 'out swords' and run 'em through if I met him/her personally :D

#45 I don't know what's so shocking about the speed, often games or movies are available on private trackers before they even reach the stores...

And I agree with whoever (sorry too lazy to go back one page) said the hunting is pointless, there will always be pirates, and anyone with more than 2 hours of experience with olly/ida will be able to get around the protection anyway (and I'd rather see GG focus their long hours of coding on the product instead of useless protections for it).

I can understand how it's annoying to put so much work into something and see people pirate it, but there's not much that can be done about it...

#46

Quote:But not to let out the dirty secret, but most people who have purchased Torque/Unity/C4/Blade3D... and thats hundereds of thousands of people... never shipped a game with the engine they purchased

I should go hide in a corner after that statement. ;)

#47

Quote:I should go hide in a corner after that statement. ;)

You, me, and a ton of others. :-D The good thing is...we came by the program the honest way.
The question of pirating has come up several times since I've been a member here. Each time we were told it can't be stopped. You can add all the drm, pick whatever else you want, but pirates are going to find a way around it. It only hurts the honest people making their life harder. I would prefer GG to just focus on making T3D the best engine available on the market.
When you do come across a pirate, just email support@garagegames.com with the information and leave it to the lawyers.

#48 heres something interesting...
RL-TeaM.NeT forum > Game Development > Game Development
Torque 3D SDK Beta 5 (yup its here)

transamguy posts links to dl beta 5.......he mentions later in the thread that he bought in to beta for $950, there seem to be a lot of gg members at that forum, judging from the posts.
this "transamguy" definatly bought a licence, he mentions things that where discussed in this private forum, he definatly has access....

#49 Ouch, this seriously sucks. The sense of entitlement never ceases to amaze. And from a beta user. :/

That being said, I don't think it's worth trying to implement DRM countermeasures, it's going to suck up your time and resources and have a net result of slowing it down by what, days? A few weeks? Same end result, costs you more money, annoys legit customers.

There aren't any solutions that actually work in these types of cases. An embedded tag would work...until someone makes a throw-away account to steal their copy for torrenting, or figures out a way to spoof someone else's legit tag, or figures out how to strip that functionality out, or sneakily copies T3D from their friend at a LAN party.

If the gaming scene is any indication, piracy is horribly efficient and energetic. Big companies throw lots of money at the problem, fruitlessly. And all they are looking to do is slow the piracy during the most profitable initial few weeks of a game release. A game engine will have a longer lifespan of sales, which means protecting it for only a few weeks is less fruitful overall.

Pirates and their sense of entitlement make me really angry, I've blogged about it on my SoW blog a number of times, but I also reluctantly came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth fighting unless you have an unbreakable system because they will hack right through it in no time at all. Best just to offer lots of value/value-added services to legit customers to encourage people to play it straight, and ignore the rest.

#50 When I purchased Adobe CS4 they allowed two installations. I can install on more than two machines, but have to deactivate on a machine before moving the activation to another. Since the toolbox has no source, this protection scheme could be incorporated into the toolbox very easily - you only need internet access when deactivating/activating.

I really would like to see GG's success since their success is one of the biggest determinates of the future level of investment into this product.

@TOM- I live in Dallas so if you round up a "Posse", give me a nod, I have a white hat and will cowboy-up with the good guys.

#51 I think there should be a challenge key.... You install the software, the software comes up with a key, you call GG up and give them your key, they give you an activation key, you enter the key and you're good to go.


OR

Just figure out a way to embed credentials into the download... Isn't there a way to stamp a download to an actual individual? For example, I'm Pete Mickelonis... If I download my legit copy of T3d from my account, perhaps you guys can embed some time of serial number in the code that is linked to my account?

Thievery just discusts me...

#52 Quick idea... what if every C++ and TorqueScript header was branded with your license info...

// Torque 3D
// Copyright (C) GarageGames.com, Inc.
//
// Licensed To:   Sickhead Games, LLC
//                10925 Estate Lane STE 220
//                Dallas, Texas 75238
//

... now if your smart could probably grep this out, but its one more step and it could keep people from casual sharing.

But it also makes doing diffs a PITA. :(

#53 It would only be a pain doing diffs from the current beta releases to the next version. If every version, starting with the next version, had the user's license info in the header comments, it would be the same from release to release (unless they changed their address between releases).

Edit: Edited to add, unless you meant it would be a pain for the pirates to do diffs, in which case, just an added bonus.

Maybe even randomly generate a file with each download (just generate a GUID and tuck it in a nested folder somewhere?) that contains the same info. Possibly double up spaces and add extra return lines so its a little more difficult to do a simple find / replace on.

#54 replace in files:

// Licensed To: Sickhead Games, LLC
// 10925 Estate Lane STE 220
// Dallas, Texas 75238

with

//

to easily done

#55 Gareth pretty much covers it, but I'll say my bit anyway.

The unfortunate truth of software piracy is you just can't stop it without seriously harming your legit users. I can't think of a piece of software that isn't available through the torrent networks, even with their various elaborate protection methods. I'm certainly not suggesting this is acceptable, but I just have yet to see an effective method of combating it.

Whatever you do to protect the software, someone will crack it. Once they crack it, your legitimate users will be the only ones bothered by your security methods. By the time your software hits torrent sites, whatever security features you've installed have been literally ripped out. I'm not encouraging software piracy, but it's unrealistic to think there's an easy fix available here.

DRM is not only annoying or potentially debilitating to your paying customers, it's also not effective. At best, DRM tactics add a delay between software release and the first cracked copy hitting the web. For games, that week is critical, hence all the effort. With a product like Torque, which is literally just a bunch of source code, protection would be far more difficult. You might be able to restrict access to the toolbox or some other secondary components, but it will have little effect (I, for example, have never really bothered to use that toolkit app that comes with T3D).

I think access to closed forums and resource sharing was one of the features that helped protect Torque in the past, but those forums are now wide open. I would say that these are the types of things that, in addition to docs, provide some incentive to users to buy the real thing. Interactive support from actual GG staff is something that would definitely add some value and be impossible to pirate.

In the end, I think the biggest issue is that everyone who's going to pirate your software isn't even likely to make a purchase if you manage to block their efforts. These people generally don't have any respect for the work that's gone into the software they use, and I doubt there's much chance of changing their opinions. If you do stop them from downloading, they're more likely to go pirate something else than actually place an order.

If you want to see an example of elaborate protection schemes failing outright, see any version of 3DS Max. They use a system of auth codes and such, the intention of which is that you need to contact the company to get a valid code, but it's been cracked every version. Fortunately for the makers, most of their customers are high-end CGI studios, universities, game companies, and other high profile groups that couldn't get away with piracy even if they wanted to.

This is getting long and repetitive. I wish there were an easy way to shut software pirates down, but it just doesn't seem to be the case. That said, if you're reading this and responsible for leaking T3D betas, know that this entire community will rally against you if we manage to find out who you are.

#56 True, anyone with decent regexp knowledge and an able editor will replace all the files with just a few clicks. Actually, that'd be the first thing I'd do to before a diff.

I'm not sure there's a good solution. Keep in mind that it doesn't matter how the product is verified, the form it will take when it is distributed illegally is what any of us would get after the verification. Also, it's not an executable, its source code. This is very hard - if not impossible - to protect.

I believe that GG should find the ressponsibles and take the issue to court. Not acting on this will make things worse imho.

#57 @Konrad: I'm also entirely in favor of any solution based on taking legal action. Someone here purchased the software and then leaked it, and there'd be a strong case assuming you can collect some evidence. Getting the evidence is, unfortunately, not likely to be a simple matter.

It's the releaser we want to catch here. Sending one of these guys to jail, or at least dropping a massive fine on his lap, would probably send a fairly strong message to anyone else thinking about it. That message? Imagine what would happen to some wanna-be hacker nerd in prison. It's not a pretty picture.

#58 They have a special place for those kinda people there...

#59 Are you really talking about sending people to jail for copying software over the net?

Jeez fellas, we are talking about guys that even by having the code, they cant release anything.

Even the possible *harm* to anyone, specially GG, is in doubt. This is getting personal, and I dont understand why.

#60 @Novack

Quote:Are you really talking about sending people to jail for copying software over the net?

Yes... more specifically distributing software without a license.

Especially the those that are the willful originator of the leaked copy.

Quote:Jeez fellas, we are talking about guys that even by having the code, they cant release anything.

Its not just about releasing a game... part of it is the personal entertainment and education that things like T3D bring.

Most people with Unity/T3D/Blade3D do game development as a hobby, or to learn, and maybe one day you ship a game. Maybe it even becomes a career.

Just because you don't ship a game doesn't mean its fair game to give it away.

Quote:Even the possible *harm* to anyone, specially GG, is in doubt. This is getting personal, and I dont understand why.

For small developers and business owners it is an extremely personal thing... they are stealing my work directly... lines of code i spent countless days and nights working on.

Money that we loose from people stealing products is money i cannot pay my employees to support their family.

This isn't some faceless behemoth filled with layers of do-nothing executives.... this is a small 4 man studio. Every dollar matters here.

They might as well have come to my house and stolen my food.

There is no excuse for pirating software... none... not a trial... not testing... not learning... no excuse at all.

If you want to use the software... pay for it.