Originally posted by: BladeVenom
Originally posted by: Matthias99
It's somewhat of a deterrent to prevent extremely casual copying. However, the common methods are so easy to bypass now that it's pretty much a joke.
But then people bitch and moan when you have to use something like Steam to validate your installation/key, or pay a monthly fee for a game. It kind of puts developers in a bad spot.
They could just release the game with no copy protection like Galactic Civilizations 2. Or at least have their own no CD patch. Unreal 2004's first patch took out the CD check.
Unfortunately, big games that get released with no copy protection immediately get pirated. You can argue until you're blue in the face that "they'll still make plenty of money" and "the people who download it probably wouldn't have bought it anyway", but think about how it would feel if you spent multiple years and millions of dollars developing a game (or other creative works) and then watched people steal copies of it. I'm guessing you might want to do something to deter it.
Just in terms of checking that the CD is in the drive -- this is so easy to bypass that I'm not sure it has much value anymore. If you are developing a game that is primarily (or only) played online, validation or "activation" of installations/keys seems to be a far more effective and less annoying method. For a single-player game, you could do things like requiring a one-time activation to ensure the same key isn't being used over and over.
As for the folks touting the "LAW". Its already been upheld in many courts across the US that clicking an 'OK' button is NOT a legally binding contract, no matter how much the software companies want it to be.
Legal opinions on EULAs are mixed. Clauses like "you may not reverse engineer this product" are very questionable, since they are basically unenforcable. Others are less so. Several court cases have revolved around clauses that attempt to prevent you from reselling or transferring software. In general EULAs and "click licenses" are not invalid.
You bought the software and the rights to do with it what you want, EXCEPT something that makes you money. That violates the intellectual property. You can't hack and mod Doom3 and then turn around and sell it again.
The position of some software makers is that you do not "own" the software, but instead are licensing it, and so you have a more limited set of rights. However, this is a very complex legal question that has not really been decided, and discussion of it is probably well beyond the scope of this thread. You do have "fair use" rights either way, but they only go so far.
You *can* (in some cases, at least) do something that makes *you* money -- if it's not a "derivative" product and there is no financial damage to the copyright owner. For instance, you could write a guide book to the game (as long as you didn't actually use any of their creative content, or imply that it is "official") and sell it -- even if there is an "official" guide already on the market. You *cannot* do things that cost the copyright owner money/sales, and in general you cannot redistribute content that you do not own without permission.
Modifying a game to run without a CD for your personal use seems like it should be fair use. Making a modded ISO that can install without a CD key is questionable (and distributing that would certainly be illegal). If a game (or other application) requires you to have multiple licensed copies/keys to use it on a LAN, modifying it to bypass that restriction is probably not OK even if it's only for your personal use.
Facebook
Twitter