Stardock's DRM Solution Is Gooey

[Keane Ng]

Stardock's DRM Solution Is Gooey

Not content to let Valve hog the spotlight, Stardock has revealed their own solution for DRM headaches: a healthy dose of Goo.

Earlier this week Valve declared Goo [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90422-Valve-Weve-Made-DRM-Obsolete].

That's not just a cute name - it stands for Game Object Obfuscation, and is a tool that Stardock says "allows developers to encapsulate their game executable into a container that includes the original executable plus Impulse Reactor, Stardock's virtual platform, into a single encrypted file."

What happens when you boot up a Goo-powered game (Gooey game?) is the program will have you enter your e-mail address and serial number, and then the game becomes attached to you, licensed and validated. Once you've done that, you never have to go online to validate the game ever again, and since it's tied to your account and not your hardware, it can be installed on multiple machines.

Also, since a Goo-powered game won't be attached to any third-party client, a developer can use it as a "universal solution since it is not tied to any particular digital distributor." That, Stardock thinks, can pave the way to games that can be validated on any digital distribution platform that supports the game.

Finally, Goo will allow gamers to resell their digitally downloaded games for the first time ever, since users will be free to disable their own license at any time and transfer it to someone else.

"Publishers want to be able to sell their games in as many channels as possible but don't want to have to implement a half-dozen 'copy protection' schemes," Stardock CEO Brad Wardell said. "Game Object Obfuscation lets the developer have a single game build that can be distributed everywhere while letting gamers potentially be able to re-download their game later from any digital service. Plus, it finally makes possible a way for gamers and publishers to transfer game licenses to players in a secure and reliable fashion."

Stardock plans to announce "multiple major publishers" that'll be using the technology next month when it releases on April 7.


Permalink

 

[Somethingfake]

Interesting idea. Stupid name.

 

[BobisOnlyBob]

What happens when someone publishes on both Stardock and Steam? Two separate mechanisms, or one wrapped in the other?

Either way this new-DRM (it's still DRM, just without the old negatives) looks like it may run into issues from competition. While I'd never advocate a monopoly on this sort of tech, multiple conflicting standards are a chore.

 

[Spleeni]

I rather do like the sound of Goo; I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

[oliveira8]

What happens when someone publishes on both Stardock and Steam? Two separate mechanisms, or one wrapped in the other?

Either way this new-DRM (it's still DRM, just without the old negatives) looks like it may run into issues from competition. While I'd never advocate a monopoly on this sort of tech, multiple conflicting standards are a chore.

Theres some publishers/developers that sell games in both platforms. In the end it will come out who sells the most popular games. In this case its Steam cause it has Valve,EA and Activision in their collection. Plus most indie games that Impulse has.

 

[TheBluesader]

I still say it'll take about 12 hours for someone to find a way to crack it.

Unless they're Russian, African or Southeast Asian. Then 6 hours.

 

[BloodyOne]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

 

[oliveira8]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

 

[BloodyOne]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

 

[oliveira8]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

Hmm..Thats odd 2GB of memory and it cant run Half Life 2? That seems more of a classic problem of a computer in dire need of a Hard Drive defrag. OR dust cleaning. Just try to ninja defrag his computer and the game should run fine.

 

[BloodyOne]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

Hmm..Thats odd 2GB of memory and it cant run Half Life 2? That seems more of a classic problem of a computer in dire need of a Hard Drive defrag. OR dust cleaning. Just try to ninja defrag his computer and the game should run fine.

Dude, my brother's hard drive has probably got only 1GB of space unfilled. He would never defrag if I told him to. Like I said, he has his hard drive full of old files from games that most of today's youngsters have never heard of (like Rage of Mages).

I have 128GB of space unused.

 

[oliveira8]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

Hmm..Thats odd 2GB of memory and it cant run Half Life 2? That seems more of a classic problem of a computer in dire need of a Hard Drive defrag. OR dust cleaning. Just try to ninja defrag his computer and the game should run fine.

Dude, my brother's hard drive has probably got only 1GB of space unfilled. He would never defrag if I told him to. Like I said, he has his hard drive full of old files from games that most of today's youngsters have never heard of (like Rage of Mages).

I have 128GB of space unused.

Yeah he just needs to defrag and clean the disks...smack him up real good and say the advantages of computer cleaning.

 

[BloodyOne]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

Hmm..Thats odd 2GB of memory and it cant run Half Life 2? That seems more of a classic problem of a computer in dire need of a Hard Drive defrag. OR dust cleaning. Just try to ninja defrag his computer and the game should run fine.

Dude, my brother's hard drive has probably got only 1GB of space unfilled. He would never defrag if I told him to. Like I said, he has his hard drive full of old files from games that most of today's youngsters have never heard of (like Rage of Mages).

I have 128GB of space unused.

Yeah he just needs to defrag and clean the disks...smack him up real good and say the advantages of computer cleaning.

1) He would not listen to me.
2) He would throw a shoe at me.
3) He would throw the second shoe at me after I explained how pathetic his attempts at violence were.
4) After laughing a bit, he would walk out of his room, pick up the shoes, walk back into his room, sit down, and throw the shoes at me again.

Oh yeah, sorry Keane if we are getting too off topic here.

 

[SmugFrog]

That sounds awesome. I have loved Stardock's approach to gaming ever since I found Galactic Civ II.

My biggest complaint about online-verification DRM though is for military members (like myself) that are deployed without an internet connection to a personal computer. For example, on a ship, I might pick up a game to play on the ship and not be able to play it until I get home or to a friend's house.

This almost happened to me when Half-Life 2 came out; if it had been released on-time, I would've bought it when we were in Hawaii - then I would have had to hold onto it for a few months without being able to play it because of the online verification. I would've been so pissed.

 

[oliveira8]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

Hmm..Thats odd 2GB of memory and it cant run Half Life 2? That seems more of a classic problem of a computer in dire need of a Hard Drive defrag. OR dust cleaning. Just try to ninja defrag his computer and the game should run fine.

Dude, my brother's hard drive has probably got only 1GB of space unfilled. He would never defrag if I told him to. Like I said, he has his hard drive full of old files from games that most of today's youngsters have never heard of (like Rage of Mages).

I have 128GB of space unused.

Yeah he just needs to defrag and clean the disks...smack him up real good and say the advantages of computer cleaning.

1) He would not listen to me.
2) He would throw a shoe at me.
3) He would throw the second shoe at me after I explained how pathetic his attempts at violence were.
4) After laughing a bit, he would walk out of his room, pick up the shoes, walk back into his room, sit down, and throw the shoes at me again.

Oh yeah, sorry Keane if we are getting too off topic here.

Ah yes its these times I love being single chi-oh wait my sister...damn! The diference is that my sister doesnt trow shoes...she trows a bucket of cold water at you when you sleeping.

Most.Horrible.Experience.Ever.

 

[BloodyOne]

Maybe we should stop quoting each other so much...?

 

[LoopyDood]

Hmmm... Interesting. I am a hardy Valve and STEAM fan myself, but my brother plays Sins of a Solar Empire, and likes it a lot. However, he despises STEAM.

Mainly because he doesn't have enough memory to run Half Life 2, which he bought after seeing me having so much fun. I keep telling him that he needs to delete all his old Oblivion files and Rome Total War files in order to make room for the game he wants to play NOW.

Or just buy new hardware. xD

In this economic crisis? I think not!

Unless I make my Custom Computer (which I have yet to do), there will probably not be any purchases.

Our situation is quite ironic.
I have 3GB of RAM, he has 2GB. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE, he has an Nvidia GeForce 7600. He can play Oblivion on higher qualities than me, without having to make exterior alterations. I bought the OJ Box, played it, loved it and baked the cake (although I could not find any suitable needle injectors from any legal suppliers). I let him watch me, but I would not let him use my account (as per STEAM user agreement, and my fear that he would mess everything up). So when I came home one day to find him playing Half Life 2 (he was staying home sick) I got pissed and banned him from my room. He then decided to buy Half Life 2 for himself.

It didn't work out. He doesn't have nearly enough memory for it. It crashes at the end of each level due to loading the next level. I had to teach him to use the console to jump to a new map. He still cannot play it properly because he won't get rid of old files.

Oh yeah, I rented my computer out to him last week, so that he could play Rome Total War on my computer (because he FINALLY got sick of his screen glitching like crazy; 2 dimensional polygons obscuring the battlefield to the point of a screenshot looking like a work of Pablo Picasso) in return for playing his copy of CoD4.

Hmm..Thats odd 2GB of memory and it cant run Half Life 2? That seems more of a classic problem of a computer in dire need of a Hard Drive defrag. OR dust cleaning. Just try to ninja defrag his computer and the game should run fine.

Dude, my brother's hard drive has probably got only 1GB of space unfilled. He would never defrag if I told him to. Like I said, he has his hard drive full of old files from games that most of today's youngsters have never heard of (like Rage of Mages).

I have 128GB of space unused.

Yeah he just needs to defrag and clean the disks...smack him up real good and say the advantages of computer cleaning.

1) He would not listen to me.
2) He would throw a shoe at me.
3) He would throw the second shoe at me after I explained how pathetic his attempts at violence were.
4) After laughing a bit, he would walk out of his room, pick up the shoes, walk back into his room, sit down, and throw the shoes at me again.

Oh yeah, sorry Keane if we are getting too off topic here.

Like he said, ninja defrag! You might not convince him to do it himself, but it would be pretty easy to do it while he's away.

Maybe we should stop quoting each other so much...?

What? You don't love getting a little message saying you've been quoted, like the one you're probably reading right now?

 

[Cousin_IT]

sounds kewl, will await further information before dancing though.