Steam and Piracy

[SoulIntake]

I think everyone has noticed how Valve has cracked down on piracy through steam whether you like it or not. The question I have been thinking is why hasnt anyone made anything that can trace shoplifted or stolen from store games like through the serial number or key or anything? Or for that matter, anything that has to be registered with a key? Now don't go steal my idea that will make me a billionaire/. I was thinking stores could pay a royalty to valve if users had to put in their cd key that they took from wherever. Thats' my two cents.

 

[destrukt]

err ..

cd-keys, you can either steal one or generate one (if you know the algorithm, or download a premade one); so how would you 'trace' them ? through the interweb, possibly voiding privacy laws but still, that's nothing new and you just basically said 'zomg, lets trace people by cd keys lolz' and that's all.

why would stores pay a royalty to valve because a user used a [stolen] cd key, its not their fault; maybe it's the horrible wording, or that's really clueless.

- you might want to put a bit more thought into your idea, which was possibly worth billions.

 

[subtlesnake]

Steam hasn't really stopped piracy because people just use a steam emulator.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Steam hasn't really stopped piracy because people just use a steam emulator.

Umm I dunno what you're talking about, no one was able to play HL2 earlier than everyone else. Plus, those people can't play on official servers, so they lose again.

 

[Dekstar]

err ..

cd-keys, you can either steal one or generate one

Impossible. If you look at certain sites now (I'm not saying which ones, but they specialise in this kind of thing) I think I read that now the only way to get an account is by stealing it.

Don't ask me how it works, but I think they (VALVe) have multiple algorithms which they interchange. So anyone looking for a similarity in multiple CD-keys would get the wrong algorithm. But yeah stealing them still works.

And also VALVe can detect what a steam emulator is (Look at the A.I. Disabled bug). As far as I know they still work through steam, and just disable any account using them after a random time.

 

[Chrysalid]

Copy protection has always been a competition between the game makers and the crackers. Today, it looks like as if very strong protections ( like the newest Starforce), implementing one or more internal encryption layers and stuff have advanced beyond the crackers' knowledge ( at least, for a while ). I heard that Starforce measures the physical dimensions of the cd/dvd in the drive and verifies that the size matches the figures of the original, master game cd/dvd. Haven't heard anyone being able to crack that, YET.

Alright, enough about SF. SoulIntake, you are right that Steam has cut down piracy: due to its online authentication system it can't be "cracked" the same way as conventional copy protections because half of the protection is Steam server-side. But if the system would get licensed and used by many companies, it could be possible that in some point a code leak could lead to Steam's failure. So that's why it's better that only Valve uses it.

 

[destrukt]

Impossible. If you look at certain sites now (I'm not saying which ones, but they specialise in this kind of thing) I think I read that now the only way to get an account is by stealing it.

it is possible, just with the generated ones 99% of the time it won't work online (unless the game has no server checking the serial key, which almost all games do).

people play the valve games illegally a few different ways, not always using a steam emulator.

you can play online with most of the current [updated] distributions, it's just /very/ hard and most people can not figure it out.

 

[Dekstar]

you can play online with most of the current [updated] distributions, it's just /very/ hard and most people can not figure it out.

And thus, with help of VAC2, Wipes out most of the kiddy-hackers that roam around

 

[Foebane]

A while ago I threw away my copy of HL2 together with the CD key.

Then last night I figured I could download it and play it again, as I remember registering the CD key on my Steam account.

Did, it, but it didn't work.