Hardware Dongle For Quake Wars? WTF


(Strogg) #1

Todd Hollenshead of ID Software just finished a talk on piracy that Flipkin and myself Ronald Diemicke attended. It was a bit of a call to arms about piracy but he also dispensed information that Quake Wars : Enemy Territory has been leaked, but they’re not sure how.

Turns out that every single one of ID Software’s games has been leaked before shipment. In fact, the leaking of pre-release versions is such a concern that they added a hardware dongle solution that the in-progress builds of Quake Wars need to run and they are guessing this is the only reason that it hasn’t been rampantly distributed on the net.

Here is the source!
http://www.mobygames.com/forums/dga,2/dgb,3/dgm,53803/


(ktr) #2

meh, its to avoid leaking…

the hardware usb dongle is like a phyical cdkey…


(kamikazee) #3

The [quote] blocks rock.
( Unless the original text was yours, of course, but it is always weird to click a link and see exactly the same text you read a second ago.)

Though I think this is not to be discussed around here, rather pick a “neutral” place.


(t-readyroc) #4

I’m guessing “hardware dongle” = USB key w/half of an encryption key pair.


(Strogg) #5

meh, its to avoid leaking…

the hardware usb dongle is like a phyical cdkey…[/quote]

Ya I know what it is but I have not seen a hardware dongle an a game since the old Commodore 64 days :lol:


(ktr) #6

meh, its to avoid leaking…

the hardware usb dongle is like a phyical cdkey…[/quote]

Ya I know what it is but I have not seen a hardware dongle an a game since the old Commodore 64 days :lol:[/quote]

most $$$ software are starting to adopt these…but they are crackable…


(signofzeta) #7

Every single video game, music, video store I went to in a chinese mall, all their merchandise is pirated. I mean my aunt buys these korean movies ripped in chinese, and you could tell they are fake. You could see that the discs don’t have pictures, and the box art is printed on a piece of paper shoved behind the plastic in the DVD case.

If you go to hong kong, all the small shops there have pirated software, only the major stores have the real deal.

My cousin is a heavy pirater (he pirates lots of games). In fact, all of his games are pirated, which is why he hated the gamecube because you can’t play pirated games. He refuses to pay for any games. He saw that his friends play counterstrike source, all of whom payed 20 bucks through steam. He can’t find a way to download it because if he does, then he does not have a CD key, and is unable to play online. His solution to this? Get ME to pay $20 for it. I’m like, NO go play ET. It’s free.

I too pirate games, only very old games unavailable in stores because I hate buying online at untrusted and non canadian sites, and also every game that doesn’t say id software on it, unless I happen to be at EB games and happen to see a cool non idsoftware game, I will buy that. The only games I ever bought recently were all from id software. Even my cousin who tells me to download the games I want, I refuse to pirate any id software game becuase I am a loyal fan. The non id software games I play, and pirated, I usually play for like a month or so and got tired of it. I only downloaded Medal of honor Pacific assault, and Call of duty 2. Both games didn’t even last a lifetime for me.

I’m chinese and it’s a fact. We are all pirates AAAARRRRRRRRRR!!!

You can’t evade the fakeness of all the games in the chinese malls.

Wait, is pirating hosting the game illegaly to download? Or is it the action of downloading a game illegally the act of being a pirate?

Out of most of the games I downloaded, they are mostly from EA.

Unfortunately, pirates are spreading. My other cousin usually buys games off the bargain bin. Now he downloads them. This is because he knows that you can download them and he’d rather use his cash on something else, and also realizes some games are way to expensive.

I have an assumption that if you accquired around 5-10 recent games in a month, chances are that some of them are downloaded.

The only way I think that can stop pirating is to put something on the executable, the one installed in the program files/(place game here) folder, so that you need the original to run the game. Any replacement will render the game useless. I know this because I have cracked and downloaded some games, and the process of getting that game to work is a cinch. I won’t go into details of how to do it. Something MUST be in the game executable so that it makes it a huge hassle for the crackers that no one wants to eat them.

Hey, maybe that thing to prevent ETQW from running before release can be installed so that it is encoded deep in the original exe, that if that piece of code is missing, or if the code in the exe is changed somehow, the exe would be useless and the game won’t work.


(figvam) #8

I hope you do realise he was talking about the beta builds?
Not to mention it’s old news… I guess you must be bored waiting for the beta expansion, bringing up old topics, trying to stir a discussion…


(signofzeta) #9

arrrrgh you caught me in the act. Check that “when is BETA coming out” thread and see that long post on the number of times I visit www.splashdamage.com/forums per day.


(BondyBoy007) #10

meh, its to avoid leaking…

the hardware usb dongle is like a phyical cdkey…[/quote]

Ya I know what it is but I have not seen a hardware dongle an a game since the old Commodore 64 days :lol:[/quote]

RoboCop 3 on the Amiga used one of these “un-crackable” dongles as protection, unfortunatly this was just seen as a challange to the crakers and a pirated copy was doing the rounds before the game hit the shelves !!!


(signofzeta) #11

That stuff inside the dongle integrated in the exe file that comes with the install DVD should take care of those pirates. I know because cracks are basically “tweaked” exe files that you replace with the original. No, i’m not a programmer and don’t know how to make cracks for software.

Heh heh, if they are leaking the prerelease versions, those stupid enough to download, or even buy (think chinese malls) would either get an extremely buggy version with no support whatsoever, or be bragged by his peers like “ha ha ha you don’t have the REAL Doom 3 haha” or “ha ha you got Quake 4 version 0.6 ha ha, I have version 1.4 for champs ha ha”

Also walkthroughs would be completely useless (not written yet) when it comes to games not gone gold, online communities will be scarce, and all you could do is get pissed off at the game crashing to desktop.


(Dr_Tenma) #12

I agree with Figvam - It clearly says they did this for the leaked, in-progress alpha or beta builds of the game. No indication if this will be true of the final retail, and I don’t imagine it will be.


(TX_RED_ANT) #13

Well its like the kid at Quakecon who got busted trying to use a USB Flash Drive to steal Quake 4 when the guys at Activision were nice enough to stay up late in the vendor area and let us still play the game late into the morning, and for video cards from their buds at Nvidia before release. Crap like that just ruins it for the rest of us. If u went to this past Qcon, the vendor area was closed by 6pm everynight, no “real” late night contests for real swag, it was bad.

Ant~


(carnage) #14

I have an assumption that if you accquired around 5-10 recent games in a month, chances are that some of them are downloaded.

10 games in a month? that gives you 3 days to play each game


(Brinkman) #15

almost all medical software uses this form of anti piracy