/-------------------------------------------------------------------------\ : : : OCEAN DECLARES WAR ON PIRATES .............. : : : : ARTICLE IN THIS WEEKS CTW (TRADE MAG.) ... : : : : THEY ASKED FOR WAR .... GIVE IT TO EM !!!! ................ : : : : TYPED IN BY RAZOR BLADE OF ALLIANCE (WHEN I HAD NAFF ALL TO DO FOR : : HALF A HOUR. : : : \-------------------------------------------------------------------------/ Gary Bracey of Ocean Software seems to be fighting a lone battle to actually do something about the ridiculous level of piracy hitting 16-bit software sales. Last week saw the launch of RoboCop 3 on the Amiga. It is his, and possible the market's, last real hope. GARY WHITTA investigates .................... "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." Martin Luther. (Actual article starts here ..... ) I can remember the old days. About five years ago, when I was nothing more than a mere slip of a lad, experiencing the untold joys of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. A friend of mine showed me a pirated copy of Jet Set Willy which had come into his posession. Though there was nothing startling about the fact that it was pirated, what amazed me at the time was the colour chart that came with it. Some silly sod had gone to the trouble of copying by hand the entire mammoth protection sheet with nothing more than a sheet of graph paper and a set of felt tip pens. THOUSANDS of little coloured squares reproduced perfectly and painstakingly - no doubt over a number of days. And all for the sake of not paying 5.50. Its that particular memory that I always recall whenever somebody announces a "pirate proof" new security device for their software - and itleaves me feeling somewhat cynical. Don't get me wrong. There's no doubting the ingenuity of some of the more recent efforts - multi-layer code wheels and unphotocopiable paper being two of my personal favourites - but I can't help thinking that no matter how clever you are, the pirates will always wheedle their way around the problem. It's propably true to say that documentation related security like code-wheels and manual word-checkers are never going to snuff out the piracy problem, because the little sods are just too determined to go down without a fight that way. The only way to win, it would seem, is with as system that - at least theoretically - should make it IMPOSSIBLE to play anything but a genuine copy. Its always been a tricky business - ask anyone who remembers the ill-fated lenslock (what a load of old crap that was !! - Razor Blade) - but Oceans latest brave effort might just be the one to do the trick. The "dongle" that comes with RoboCop 3 is supposedly impossible to fake - or at least enough to make actually buying a real one a more realistic option. Plugging into the back of the spare joystick port, it interacts with the software and simply wont let the game run if it isnt plugged in. It's by no means the first time such a device has been tried - they've been favourites with the PC publishers for quite a while - but its certainly the first time a major leisure publisher has made such a concerted effort to stamp out the piracy problem. HEAVEN KNOWS BRACEY'S MISERABLE NOW Oceans jovial software director Gary Bracey has been the driving force behind the scheme - but he's by no means happy that he's been forced to resort to such measures. "I think it's a very sad indictment of the industry today that we have to do something like this to protect our sales@, he says. Considereing that the price of these dongles is about a quid a throw, Bracey has a right to be miserable. "Its an expensive venture, but we're absorbing the price so that the consumer doesn't have to pay any more. We're hoping that the lack of pirated versions will offset the cost of bundling the dongle with the game ". Confident though he is, Bracey admits that no matter how sophisticated a dongle or other device may be, the hardened cracking crews will find a way around it eventually. The whole point of the excercise is simply to buy time by holding off the hackers during the crucial first couple of months while the game is new and "hot". Hopefully, by the time Doctor Blitter and Finland Freaks have programmed their way around the dongle, it will be to late for the pirated version to damage the game's sales. So far as Ocean is concerned thats only a theory, but for the geezers who actually invented the thing, there are hard facts that support the case. Ex QuickSilva impresarios John Hollis and Nick Lambert bundled a prototype dongle with an ST MIDI sequencer package they produced back in 1988 - and to this day, Lambert claims its the only Atari music package never to have been hacked (Is this True ??? - Leave me a message if you know otherwise - Razor Blade). The pair claim that the dongle they have now produced for Ocean under their new company name of Worx-4-me is a far more sophisticated affair. "When we were researching how we would do this dongle ", Lambert explains, "We took a look at some other software packages that had used similar devices. One piece of software we looked at used a dongle that slotted into the cartridge port, and the part of the software that controlled the device was very clever stuff. The problem was that it was put in such an obvious place that anyone who knows anything about the Atari could just go straight to that piece of code and cut it out. It's like putting ultra-high security locks on your door and then leaving the key on a string outside." To get around this problem, Hollis has developed a system whereby the protection code that interacts with the dongle is woven intricately into the rest of the program. Because it's coiled around various vital parts of the game code like a cancer, its very difficult to cut out without damaging the actual game program. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE ? Early results like these can only be good news for the games industry, although the price of these devices - no matter how effective they may be - means that many companies are likely to sit back and wait to see how products like Robocop 3 perform before they take the plunge themselves. But nobody will be watching more avidly than Ocean which is naturally keen to see if the dongle turns out to be as uncrackable as it is supposed to be. Of course, any pirated copies that do make their way back to Ocean are liable to be a great help. When analysed it will allow Hollis and Lambert to refine their code, stamp out any loopholes, and make future dongles even tougher to crack. The hope is that, if the Worx-4-me dongle becomes an industry standard, the security wont have to be added to the main program as an afterthought, as was the case with RoboCop 3 - programmers will be able to protect their games even as they are writing them, with security so tortuously coded in that it will be nigh-on impossible to hack out short of completely re-writing the game. Of course, it's all still theory and it won't be until well after christmas that Ocean can get definite feedback on RoboCop 3's performance, and the industry decides whether to commit or not. Once again, in a war that's already lasted longer than the one against Hitler, all we can do is wait ....................................... *********************************** THE END ****************************** WATCH OUT FOR THE FIRST ALLIANCE DOX DISK SOON TO BE RELEASED. 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