RoQuEr

Spent 45 minutes installing neverwinter nights, Only to be asked for a CD key, which I left at my parents house 1000 miles away. Its lousy copyright protection anyways. Especially for a game like NWN, which has very limited online applications.

Sure enough I find a keygen out there, finish installing and look for a patch. Turns out that the game patches itself automatically, but it alson knows that my keygen is a fake. Really starting to piss me off.

It would be really cool if there were a secure online website where once could store all his CD Keys, that way you can get rid of all the little pieces of paper that are floating around. I almost lost my XP cd key when the cardboard slip it was printed on fell out of my CD case right in front of my dog, who eats anything.

TeeSeeJay

You're kidding, right?

That's why I use notepad to jot down CD Keys and keep the text file with the rest of my documents.

PixyJunket

Most copy protection just serves to annoy the people that respect the software designers by PAYING for thier product. This is a problem that dates back to the old days of "What is the 3rd word of the 2nd paragrah on page 14 of the manual?".. you paid for the software, lose the book, and now you're stuck with nothing while little children are playing with thier cracked version for free. I know piracy is a problem, but the methods they're trying to use to prevent it aren't doing much.

Trevor

That....is a great idea. Thanks.

I'd also recommend keeping a backup of that file on floppy or another computer.

TeeSeeJay

Yeah, I burn a backup of the my documents folder on a monthly basis -- CD keys I could lose and not hate myself, but 5 years of financial data is a pain in the ass to be without, not to mention every creative thought I've ever had

Groucho

I'm no friend of piracy, but copy protection is just ridiculous. "No CD" hacks and key generators are available for games almost immediately...sometimes even before the game comes out. Since every method of copy protection developed so far has been a complete and utter failure, and serves no purpose other than to irritate your paying customers...why continue to do it? Your game is still going to be hacked and copied no matter what.

finbogg

I read an article (in Game -Developer magazine) by a game company programmer who explained the mind-set beind copy protection. Basically, they know it will be broken. They but the anti-copy etc protection in there as a means to slow down hackers. He pointed out one game (the title of which eludes me) where the new anti-piracy programming they developed had stalled the hackers for an month before it was cracked. He chalked this up as a great victory.

Sounds like they expect it to be hacked, they just hope to have a window of time after release where they can prevent this.

Seems strange in some ways since I hear about how cracked versions are surfacing before the actual release date of some games (like Warcraft III). Guess that could be written off as an "inside job".

Trevor

Plus, the fact is that the mahjority of gamers are not 'saavy' or 'morally ambiguous' enough to track down the hacks or even try to make copies or 'stea;' the game. The majority of people can do very little with their computers besides what autoplay CDs allow them to do.

And some who aren't quite as clueless, still give up when confronted with basic copy protection or barriers to making copies or playing without the CD.

TeeSeeJay

That's true. What copy-protection does is stop "casual piracy"

DaveNinja

I thought the Warcraft 3 copy protection worked good. you needed the unique CD key to play on battlenet. So you have to buy to play online. you can play the warez copy single player but online is where the most replay is at.

El-Kabong

Simple - take a sharpie and write the key right on the disc. I've been doing that with all my windows discs, and I've never had a problem.

WOWZY

Benn doing that for a long time also. It saves me so much headache.

Trevor

I do this also, but some discs are multi-colored and/or full of text, so it would be hard to read anything added with a sharpie.

Goblincat

Easy... Just flip the disc over. There should be a nice big blank area for you to write on.

RoQuEr

I do that when I burn backups, but I have problems reading my own handwriting, so that would be bad on an original disk


Actually you CAN play online but not on battle.net . These are hosts for Warez players too. ( I imagine most of them cheat as well, but I've never tried it, so I don't know)

Joshic

anyone remember copy protection in the form of code-wheels? they were a series of paper circles with windowed slots. you had to line up the wheels to reveal the "code", which was necessary to start the game. those were really, really obnoxious.

AgtFox

Like Earl Weaver Baseball...heh.

Goblincat

The original Pool of Radiance had one of those. The game would give you the symbols to line up and the boxes would reveal a word like "Dagger" or "Knight".

The games that followed in the series used the old "What is the 3rd word of the 4th paragraph of page 16".

Then there was that Gieger style PC game ("Darkseed") in the mid 90's that had a floppy that was a "key" that you had to insert before playing to get the game to run.

goLUCKY

I hated those circles of copy protection.

Just a note, I usually e-mail info (serial #'s) that I need to keep handy to one of my internet e-mail addresses, then I put it in a folder. Sometimes I encrypt it, sometimes I don't

RoQuEr

Yup, I also remember photocopying like 50 pages of that dumb wheel as well.

I fired up the original Masters of Orion a few weeks ago, and conveniantly made the copy protection info into my windows desktop image.

Breakfast with Girls

Generally, any 1:1 online database/required registration scheme would work for the majority of people.

Blake

If you have access to any webspace such as I do, you can put all of your info online in a password protected directory (as I do). It's easily accessible from anywhere with Internet access and no way for others to access it (AFAIK - both a cryptic directory & .htaccess password protection).

Oh yeah, I use this:

http://www.xav.com/scripts/start/

It's quite nice - keeps phone numbers, a to-do list, and pretty much anything else I need online, but in a password protected directory.