O noes game pirates are doomed

[Wing Zero]

Encryption Chip Will End Piracy, Says Atari Founder - Shacknews - PC Games, PlayStation, Xbox 360 and Wii video game news, previews and downloads

At yesterday's Wedbush Morgan Securities conference, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell claimed that a stealth encryption chip will "absolutely stop piracy of [PC] gameplay."

"There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now," explained Bushnell, according to a GamesIndustry report.

"What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world--which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords--which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem."

Piracy has been a hot-button issue in the PC gaming industry for some time now, with renowned PC developers such as Crytek, id, and Epic claiming that the high rate of pirated PC software forced them to put games on other platforms.

"I've seen studios close as the result of it, I've seen people lose their homes," former Ritual QA manager Mike Russell told Shacknews while discussing the effects of piracy. "I guess I'm more vocal than a lot of people because I've seen the personal side of it, and it's just sad that we have so many people looking for a way of justifying it."

Bushnell suggested that though movie and music piracy will likely continue unabated, game markets made previously inaccessible due to piracy issues will begin to flourish as the chip's install base grows.

"Games are a different thing, because games are so integrated with the code. The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay," he noted. "As soon as the installed base of the TPM hardware chip gets large enough, we will start to see revenues coming from Asia and India at a time when before it didn't make sense."

After founding Atari and making Pong a household name, Bushnell went on to create the Chuck E. Cheese franchise, which mixed pizza eateries with arcades and animatronic stage performances.

Since then, he has moved away from the mainstream video game industry, and recently went so far as to label modern games "pure, unadulterated trash."

 

[concrete_sox]

we wouldnt be having this problem if the world didnt have people like Pan

 

[Wing Zero]

we wouldnt be having this problem if the world didnt have people like Pan

.... wut?

 

[concrete_sox]

dont wut me learn english and read what i said

 

[EEX_ca_aok]

Someone would eventually come up with a tool that you could download to crack it.

 

[Laharl]

OH NOES?!

I seem to recall Microsoft claiming that their precious verification tool would never be cracked. Oh, the arrogance of corporations knows no bounds.

 

[Emperor Pan I]

The only solution is to make their games stop being ****.

 

[Laharl]

I agree. But then again they're about as smart as the music and movie industries: They see the people as the problem, not the lack of quality of their products.

 

[x42bn6]

Indeed, the comparison with Windows Vista is correct.

Trusted Platform Module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows Vista indeed uses TPM and it hasn't stopped people from cracking it.

Some more privacy issues regarding TPM:

~ Is Microsoft skirting the issue? | Tech News on ZDNet
~ Subscription Services (Backdoor keys for law enforcement? Oh noes)

There's an excellent summary of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) and the chip itself written by a Cambridge University student: Trusted Computing FAQ TC / TCG / LaGrande / NGSCB / Longhorn / Palladium - which I highly recommend you read before jumping to conclusions.*

 

[Laharl]

So it depends on your OS to prevent piracy? Cute. Now I bet M$ wishes he could force people to use their crock of a OS.

TCG = grotesque. So we can buy new PC's and have little control over how we use them? HOW DO WE LOSE?! Oh, right.

 

[Octopor]

Well, it's a good thing I pirate everything but games.

 

[x42bn6]

So it depends on your OS to prevent piracy? Cute. Now I bet M$ wishes he could force people to use their crock of a OS.

TCG = grotesque. So we can buy new PC's and have little control over how we use them? HOW DO WE LOSE?! Oh, right.

It depends. If Trusted Computing gets its way, then we could see lots of software written for TPM-enabled computers which will more than likely not work for non-TPM-enabled computers. It depends on the sweeteners that Microsoft and the rest of the members of TC offer developers. If they do it how Sony did for the PS2, making it hard to write code for the PS2, then it could well backfire. However, considering that Windows continues to dominate the world's operating system, companies will be loathe to not develop software for Windows.

One has to also note that IBM and HP are developing a version of TPM-enabled Linux.

It's now starting to come down to the major issue, to me, that Microsoft and the big companies are attempting to force software choices upon end-users and I feel this is a form of censorship. If this comes into force, suddenly OpenOffice will have to rewrite its code to support the new TPM framework. But TPM can also prevent OpenOffice from running. It raises serious privacy implications, too - if the operating system cannot control how programs work, which is an important feature of virtual computing, then how can we trust programs to run securely? Or, the larger implication - would you be happy with Disney running part of your computer?

The worst part is that if this is going to go through, there are no suitable counter-alternatives. Both AMD and Intel, who make up nearly 100% of the world's processor market share, are in the TCG. That means that just about every processor that comes out after, say, 2011 will be fitted with a TPM chip. Microsoft is part of this so just about every computer in the world will be running software for the TPM chip. If we had a strong competitor to Windows, say, Linux, they'd still likely need to be written for TPM chips as they'd be compiled for the Intel and AMD processors (Linux is predominantly written in C++ and assembler). In other words, if I don't trust Disney, I don't really have much choice but to keep my laptop in excellent condition.

My view is that it's a privacy violation.

If there is one hope, it's that the anti-trust suit in Europe will hopefully prevent this but another anti-trust lawsuit would take another decade or something, which will be too late.

After all, it is my computer and I would like full exclusive rights to it, thank-you-very-much. I can accept enforcement of copyright - but not at the cost of Big Brother telling my computer what to do.

For the geek in everyone, there are a couple of Slashdot articles on this. Read some of the comments...*

 

[TroiK-]

Someone would eventually come up with a tool that you could download to crack it.

Quoted for hot sex.

 

[Tipsy]

My view is that it's a privacy violation.

If there is one hope, it's that the anti-trust suit in Europe will hopefully prevent this but another anti-trust lawsuit would take another decade or something, which will be too late.

After all, it is my computer and I would like full exclusive rights to it, thank-you-very-much. I can accept enforcement of copyright - but not at the cost of Big Brother telling my computer what to do.

The act of mutual agreement to buy a computer that you have full knowledge is TPM-enabled is exactly how a violation of your privacy? They are offering a product and it is completely your choice to buy it or not.

What's even worse is that the only 'hope' you point out is through anti-trust regulations. In the US. we've had anti-trust regulation for over a hundred years (since the Sherman Anti-Trust Act) and it has been an utter failure in promoting competition (its goal). Time after time, this legislation goes under the control seek to regulate through the advantages of special interests (informational, funding, motivational, etc). For example, if you look at the last anti-trust case against Microsoft in the US, it was brought against it by its rivals - why focus on improving your quality and lowering prices (via raising efficiency) when you can simply bring your competitor to court? The end result of this 'hope' is a less innovative and less efficient industry, the opposite of what you're hoping it will do in the long run.

Finally, how exactly are your two statements compatible in principle? You have a problem with 'big brother' (which isn't even the government in your first statement, it's a privately run group), yet at the same time you don't have a problem with 'big brother' (actually the government this time) actually forcing the design of their product to be a specific way? How are the two different other than in one case the property is owned by you and in the other it is owned by a different individual (or group of individuals in the case of corporations)?


That being said, this sucks and I think EEX is right, or at least close to right.

 

[concrete_sox]

man if only ppl wernt as cheap as pan and just went and bought the game we wouldnt be having this trouble

 

[Laharl]

I'm pretty sure that Pan & I would not download games if they were worth going out and spending our precious money on. As opposed to being of poor quality.

 

[Wing Zero]

 

[Emperor Pan I]

I'm pretty sure that Pan & I would not download games if they were worth going out and spending our precious money on. As opposed to being of poor quality.

Half the games I download are just the PC versions of the games I already own on the 360. The other half are games I have no interest in buying, but play for whatever reason I feel like.

 

[Laharl]

And that's the truth.

 

[AZN_FLEA]

Omfg Thats So Rofffllaff