If you were to do this today, how could you make it foolproof?

confusedbucket 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

COD:BO7's single-player uses dedicated servers. Terrible, yes, but that's as foolproof as it gets when it comes to piracy. They also probably did this to combat all the 'services' offering to unlock camos/cosmetics that you'd normally have to grind for; players would give someone their credentials (probably stolen later and sold to cheaters) and the person on the other side would then use a hacked client to trick the backend into thinking they completed all the challenges. With a server-side campaign, that probably got much more time consuming, I reckon.

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shoo 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

there isn't a market for gamers buying games on CDs these days, so it's not really a problem that needs to be solved

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charcircuit 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The same problem exists with PC games released on DVDs.

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merb 4 hours ago | parent [-]

there isn't a market for gamers buying games on DVDs these days. BlueRay the same.

Of course there are voice that do want real disks but sadly that time is over. Digital sales won.

	▲	charcircuit 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is, at least for collector's editions. I'll continue to support physical for as long as possible.

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brcmthrowaway 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well how does Steam do DRM?

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jamesfinlayson 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think most (all?) Steam games link steam_api.dll (or something like that) which somehow figures out the running Steam process and thus the Steam ID, and then does a HTTP API request to check that you own the title.

Like 15 years ago Steam launched CEG (Custom Executable Generation) - I remember reading a write-up a while ago, but each user had a customer launcher generated on install I think, and I think there was an extra segment put into the .exe file and that was put to use somehow, though I don't know if CEG is still a thing.

	▲	select1 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The ownership check you are referring to is a local check. There is another check (involving EncryptedAppTickets) which is not local, but far fewer games use that. CEG is long dead/was broken immediately in a pragmatic, automatable way.

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wbl 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Its easier on a system that doesn't need to do broadcast distribution and with servers available.