Game Design Reducing PC Piracy, Inflating Identity Theft

[Actual]

Okay, are we talking about actually hacking, or are we just talking about phishing? There is a difference. For example:

Imagine greedy brat says to naive brat, "Would you like all the achievements in Left 4Dead? I can do it with my hacking program, just give me your password and I'll load them on now."

Naive brat goes for it, and next thing he knows he's getting an email from greedy brat: "Lol thanks for all the free games newb."

That is not hacking. Maybe it's not exactly phishing either, but definitely not hacking. And you have no reason to worry about stuff like that if you're smart enough not to give your log-in details to strangers.

Phishing is generally easy to avoid as well; if you get any e-mails claiming to be from some service and they want you to click here to log in and do something, you don't click there. You open your browser and manually type the URL of the site, and log in that way so you know it's safe. If the e-mail was real, you should easily find what they needed you to do, and if it was fake, you won't find anything (although checking with support never hurts).

The thought of being actually hacked does scare me a bit, and if that's what's actually happening to others more and more frequently, that sucks. But if it's just people trying to trick you, that I'm not so worried about. Would be nice if Matt Ployhar would be more clear or site some sources on this.

I would be very surprised if he meant actual hacking. Actually hacking into the servers of an online game or somehow tricking it into thinking you were the owner of accounts you weren't would (hopefully) require great expertise and be hugely time consuming.

Why bother when you can just trick people much more quickly?

I work in a software company and we tend to call it account hijacking for lack of a better term, as you're right; hacking doesn't fit it at all, and it's a little broader than the phishing term.

Cheers Actual.. again!

This is what I thought. An MMO account theft is sensitive because of all the volatile elements to it. Equipment can be sold, gold transferred etc. But what can anyone do with my Steam account? Download and play my games for the whole 24 hours it's going to take me to get it back? They can't transfer them or sell them off. Valve has that wrapped up pretty tight. I mean, maybe they could mess with my cloud saves if they're real bastards but the local save games can be forced to take priority so.. Hell you can't even read your own credit card info. This hardly seems like a burgeoning threat to the gaming community.

I'm not stalking you, I just like answering questions. o.o

I think you're right, taking someone's steam account doesn't allow you to do any further harm to them.

You could sell the whole account on but a google search has showed me there's no organised market for that (unlike for World of Warcraft, for instance) so you'd have to try and ebay it or whatever and the original owner can still get it back, I don't see it being worth all the effort.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yay! Everyone wins!

...Except legit consumers who will be impacted anyway, but nobody seems to care about them.

 

[HellspawnCandy]

Instead of the company being screwed over it's the consumer!

 

[Tom Phoenix]

Of course there are better ways to reduce piracy. Stop treating your legitimate customers as pirates is one way. That way they'll be more likely to buy the game then, you know, pirate it.

Publishers think some kind of technology will stop pirates. It will not. Piracy is more of social problem, not a technological problem. And of course "social" is where pretty much all Publishers fail at.

I find it kinda funny that companies even bother with DRM anymore, you aren't gonna stop pirates, all you're doing is pissing off paying customers.

That's beacuse the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent piracy. It is to prevent used game sales. Afterall, while DRM is about as effective as a paper towel against piracy, it is essentially an almost foolproof method of preventing sales of legitimate used copies.

Digital distribution, MMOs and "free-to-play" games are a step up from that, since they effectively turn a game from a product into a service, thus taking away legal ownerships from the consumer and bypassing the "First Sale Doctrine" altogether. This is the primary reason why developers and publishers are attracted to these kind of business models, since it essentially allows them to have the cake and eat it too.

 

[Irridium]

Of course there are better ways to reduce piracy. Stop treating your legitimate customers as pirates is one way. That way they'll be more likely to buy the game then, you know, pirate it.

Publishers think some kind of technology will stop pirates. It will not. Piracy is more of social problem, not a technological problem. And of course "social" is where pretty much all Publishers fail at.

I find it kinda funny that companies even bother with DRM anymore, you aren't gonna stop pirates, all you're doing is pissing off paying customers.

That's beacuse the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent piracy. It is to prevent used game sales. Afterall, while DRM is about as effective as a paper towel against piracy, it is essentially an almost foolproof method of preventing sales of legitimate used copies.

Digital distribution, MMOs and "free-to-play" games are a step up from that, since they effectively turn a game from a product into a service, thus taking away legal ownerships from the consumer and bypassing the "First Sale Doctrine" altogether. This is the primary reason why developers and publishers are attracted to these kind of business models, since it essentially allows them to have the cake and eat it too.

Good point. Or it would be, if you could trade in PC games. You can't. At least not anywhere I've seen in the US.

Which is why I feel EULA's on the PC are absolute bullshit. They're not revealed until we buy them, and usually revealed only when we're in the middle of installing the game. Which is way past the point of returning anything for the price you paid.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

Of course there are better ways to reduce piracy. Stop treating your legitimate customers as pirates is one way. That way they'll be more likely to buy the game then, you know, pirate it.

Publishers think some kind of technology will stop pirates. It will not. Piracy is more of social problem, not a technological problem. And of course "social" is where pretty much all Publishers fail at.

I find it kinda funny that companies even bother with DRM anymore, you aren't gonna stop pirates, all you're doing is pissing off paying customers.

That's beacuse the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent piracy. It is to prevent used game sales. Afterall, while DRM is about as effective as a paper towel against piracy, it is essentially an almost foolproof method of preventing sales of legitimate used copies.

Digital distribution, MMOs and "free-to-play" games are a step up from that, since they effectively turn a game from a product into a service, thus taking away legal ownerships from the consumer and bypassing the "First Sale Doctrine" altogether. This is the primary reason why developers and publishers are attracted to these kind of business models, since it essentially allows them to have the cake and eat it too.

Good point. Or it would be, if you could trade in PC games. You can't. At least not anywhere I've seen in the US.

Which is why I feel EULA's on the PC are absolute bullshit. They're not revealed until we buy them, and usually revealed only when we're in the middle of installing the game. Which is way past the point of returning anything for the price you paid.

Yeah, but why do you think you can't trade in PC games? Precisely beacuse they have DRM on them. Rather than deal with the hassle of recognising whether or not a specific PC game has DRM or not, most retailers decided to just ban trade-ins of PC games outright.

Its not like retailers just decided out of the blue to not allow PC game trade-ins. They did so beacuse DRM effectively renders sales of used PC games entirely moot.

 

[Irridium]

Yeah, but why do you think you can't trade in PC games? Precisely beacuse they have DRM on them. Rather than deal with the hassle of recognising whether or not a specific PC game has DRM or not, most retailers decided to just ban trade-ins of PC games outright.

Its not like retailers just decided out of the blue to not allow PC game trade-ins. They did so beacuse DRM effectively renders sales of used PC games entirely moot.

I always figured stores stopped taking used PC games because people would just buy the game, copy it, then re-sell it.

Perhaps its all of the above.

 

[coldfrog]

All it costs to help reduce identity theft is to give people more information about how to protect themselves. You don't even need to add new code! Whether people heed that advice is up to them, but for the most part, identity theft falls on the person with the bad password and the poor virus protection.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

Yeah, but why do you think you can't trade in PC games? Precisely beacuse they have DRM on them. Rather than deal with the hassle of recognising whether or not a specific PC game has DRM or not, most retailers decided to just ban trade-ins of PC games outright.

Its not like retailers just decided out of the blue to not allow PC game trade-ins. They did so beacuse DRM effectively renders sales of used PC games entirely moot.

I always figured stores stopped taking used PC games because people would just buy the game, copy it, then re-sell it.

Perhaps its all of the above.

You think stores themselves actually care about that? If that were the case, they would have killed off the used game sales of most handheld and console games a long time ago.

That said, yeah, it was probably all of the above.

 

[samsonguy920]

I don't buy that piracy is going down because of MMO's and such. More than likely it is down because currently there aren't enough games coming out worth the effort. Wait til this summer and I bet the stats go back up with Portal 2, Duke Nukem Forever, and other long-awaited releases.
As for Identity Theft, that term doesn't really apply to having your Battle.net or Steam account being hacked or phished. That is a big misstatement if I ever seen one and just convinces me more that these guys didn't really care that much about their research as they should have. All you lose is your account access and what was included. Now if they manage to pull your payment info out (which doesn't show it all to me when I want to change it so not sure if that is even a concern for anything outside of Steam purchases) then that can be used for ID theft.
But definitely take note that if you lose your Battle.net or Steam access to a hacker or phisher the first thing you should do is cancel the card you have put in for payment info. If you currently are not running a WoW account best to delete the payment info anyway. You can reenter it with ease when you resubscribe.
Then contact Valve or Blizzard and get the ball rolling to get the account back in your control. That will take longer but won't cost you anything in the meantime if the sleaze that took your account away can't use your credit or debit card. I wouldn't be surprised if some phishers are quiet about taking some steam accounts, and use the payment info to buy their own account gifts(so it pays to keep a sharp eye on your account records). Others will use a phished account to phish everyone on the person's friends list, as what happened to me once. I got lucky and figured out it was bogus and changed my password immediately, twice for good measure. Breaks my heart I will probably never play with that guy again, as I can never be certain that he is legit if he gets his account back.
The old adage of changing your password often still plays in your favor here. Also using a good malware scanner to look out for keyloggers will be good. Some are free to use and are effective without being hindrances like Norton(which doesn't even scan for all malware and spyware itself). Changing your password won't stop a hacker, but will discourage phishers. And if your account does get cracked, changing the password uncracks it giving nothing but frustration to the weasel on the other end. Of course if they crack it, then they can change it, if they also have access to any other info the service will ask for upon any change in account. Otherwise they only have until you change the password yourself.

Steam is not "game design".

That is very accurate. Steam is actually an operating system in its own right. It just lacks the coding to run on its own minus Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.

 

[samsonguy920]

Which is why I feel EULA's on the PC are absolute bullshit. They're not revealed until we buy them, and usually revealed only when we're in the middle of installing the game. Which is way past the point of returning anything for the price you paid.

One reason they will never be legally binding. Which keeps me happy.

 

[duedmen]

Mmm. I knew that account theft is an issue with WoW, but on other platforms, really? I wasn't aware that there were frequent cases of Steam account theft, perhaps someone could fill me in?

Honestly, I don't know if it happens frequently but I have heard of it happening.

A steam account can be worth a lot of money if there are a lot of games on it.

Imagine greedy brat says to naive brat, "Would you like all the achievements in Left 4Dead? I can do it with my hacking program, just give me your password and I'll load them on now."

Naive brat goes for it, and next thing he knows he's getting an email from greedy brat: "Lol thanks for all the free games newb."

You or I would correct this by calling Valve support and having the account returned to us, but there are many people who aren't so sensible.

Cheers Actual.. again!

This is what I thought. An MMO account theft is sensitive because of all the volatile elements to it. Equipment can be sold, gold transferred etc. But what can anyone do with my Steam account? Download and play my games for the whole 24 hours it's going to take me to get it back? They can't transfer them or sell them off. Valve has that wrapped up pretty tight. I mean, maybe they could mess with my cloud saves if they're real bastards but the local save games can be forced to take priority so.. Hell you can't even read your own credit card info. This hardly seems like a burgeoning threat to the gaming community.

I had my first steam account hacked once got it back within a few days but the jerk hacked on a VAC server and then got me vac banned

 

[JediMB]

free-to-play games are much harder to pirate than single-player titles.

*Facepalm.*

Surprised I'm the first one to notice this. "Oh dude, you hear about that new free to play game? I'm going to pirate it."

"Lolwut?"

Aren't there some retail MMOs that make you buy the game but after that are free to play (no monthly fees)? If there are, that's obviously what they were talking about.

You are correct. Playing the game is free, but you still have to own (buy) it to begin with.

It's a misleading term, though.

Those are just called MMOs with no subscription fee. Free to play literally means just that. Example: League of Legends. Download, play. No cost.

There's already a word for that:

Freeware.

The term free-to-play is usually used with MMOs.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

Now we see how the pirate supporters see their heroes, if they turn against themselves.

Most of the people were fine with piracy as long as it "just hits the industry".
But what will happen when these exact people become the "focus group" /victims?

this is going to be interesting....

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Ya right... if the numbers of PC piracy are down it just means there are less PC games being made or worth pirating.

Ah PR you can spin anythign the way you want it who cares for facts....